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The Silver Series of English Classics 



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ESSAY ON ADDISON 



EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 
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PUBLISHERS' ANN0UNCEMP:NT. 



The Silver Series of English Classics is designed to fur- 
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3 



4 publishers' announcement. 

the essay, is shown in the Introduction the difference between the 
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INTRODUCTION. 



The Critical Essay. 

Sketches of the lives of Addison and Macaulay are 
given in other volumes of this series, — that of Addison, 
with the "Sir Roger de Coverley Papers," and that of 
Macaulay, with his " Essay on Milton." 

Expositions of the Essay, as such, and of the Biographical 
Essay, have also appeared in the volumes which contain 
the "Essay on Milton" and Southey's "Life of Nelson." 

This introduction, therefore, will not repeat what has 
been already presented, but will define the Critical Essay 
in Literature, as illustrated in Macaulay's " Addison." 

Macaulay's "Dryden" might perhaps furnish a more 
complete example of the critical style, because it treats 
almost wholly of the poet's literary efforts and skill ; 
while the " Essay oii Addison " weaves more largely the 
biographical with the critical into the composition. 

In his " Lord Bacon," Macaulay has made the first part 
mainly biographical, and the last part critical. Other 
essays, like those on Warren Hastings and Frederick the 
Great, are historical and biographical. 

Literature is distinct from science and philoso})1^3^ The 
term belles-lettres does not include the whole of its domain ; 
there is a vast field of authorship outside its province, 



b THE CRITICAL ESSAY. 

— for history, art, science, and philosophy may be treated 
in a literary way. Yet the literary critic has his special 
function; and, as a self-constituted judge of the form in 
which the work of authors is presented to the public, his 
work is well defined. 

When literary criticism is spoken of, it is not meant 
that by it an author's life is exhibited and his personal 
conduct dissected; these are not the subjects for literary 
criticism as such. Its province is to consider critically an 
author's style, his manner of presenting ideas, skill in the 
art of composition, and good judgment in selecting facts 
and drawing inferences. 

There are minor matters on which the critic may touch, 
with more or less advantage to his main purpose. He 
may show that an author's success has depended on his 
peculiar traits and surroundings, and that his associations 
and opportunities have aided or retarded the development 
of his genius. The critic is also allowed to refer to inter- 
esting episodes in the author's life, and may take occasion 
to discuss principles that underlie the author's work. But 
the literary critic deals primarily with the productions 
before him, as literature. 

Such a critic needs peculiar qualifications for his work. 
His talent may not equal the genius of the author that 
he criticises ; but, as a critic, he must show himself at least 
able to solve the literary problems which he raises concern- 
ing that author's work. The critical Daemon that whis- 
pered to Socrates still haunts the Academy ; seldom, how- 
ever, can the critics whom he inspires, answer, as Socrates 
did, all the questions they are apt to ask. 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

A generous respect for talent, and a keen sense of " the 
flabbiness of a fool," enable the critic to do justice to the 
one, and to scarify the other. But, if he mistake his own 
liking or disliking of an author for a virtue or a defect 
in the ;iuthor himself, he will be apt to praise a glare for 
a sunrise, or fail to detect a diamond because the setting 
is not to his taste. 

It is better for a critic to be removed by space or time 
from the men whom he attempts to characterize. Rivals 
cannot justly criticise each other; witness the acrimonious 
contest, as shown in the " Essay on Addison," between Pope 
and Addison, Swift and Addison, Tickell and Pope. The 
best criticisms are generally concerning persons long dead. 
They are no longer in the lists. 

The perspective down the aisle of a traditional pantheon 
like Westminster Abbey, with a Poet's Corner at the 
farther end, helps a critic amazingly in disinterestedness 
and honesty. 

The strategic point of a critic's vision is the choice of a 
sul)ject suited to his own special department in criticism. 
A musical reviewer cannot often stray Avith success into the 
realms of sculpture or painting; neither can the critical 
philosopher excel in the department of pure narration. 

The term Revieiver is often better than Critic, because 
it suggests to the public analysis and information rather 
than a search for defects. 

When a Critic, or Reviewer, attempts to show off his 
own ability by fine writing, it is easily seen that his vanity 
invites a comparison (generally to his own discomfiture) 
between himself and the author whose productions are 



8 THE CRITICAL ESSAY. ' 

under his hand. The critic should be as impersonal as" 
possible. He should keep himself in the background ; — 
the screen on which he flings the picture, in broad light; 
the camera and the manipulator, in the dark. It is not 
Macaulay whom we seek in his essays, but Addison or Lord 
Clive. 

Once more, true criticism does not attempt to stir the 
emotions or passions of the reader by thrilling passages and 
eloquent appeals. Its legitimate function is to point out 
where an autJior, in the productions under review, has shown 
the power to stir the soul or convince the reason. The critic 
will calmly consider with the reader how the writer has done 
this, and whether it has been done by proper means. 

English literature furnishes many excellent examples of 
the critical faculty. It comprises not only the original 
compositions of eminent poets and prose writers, but also 
reviews of the works of those authors. There are, more- 
over, some masterly disquisitions by those authors them- 
selves, reviewing earlier or contemporary writers. Others, 
who have assumed the function of criticism as their chief 
aim in literature, have risen high in rank. Of late years 
they have become so numerous, and many have done their 
work so well, that a select school of literary critics has 
created a cult of its own, and we sometimes wonder how 
the world of letters could get on well without them. 

It is true that their voluminous extracts often prevent 
people who are content with receiving information at 
second hand, from seeking the primitive sources; but this 
must be said, — it is better to give to the many a care- 
fully selected and wide range of general literature, than to 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

leave the flowery meads and classic paths unsought and 
unknown, save to the few whose enthusiasm or leisure 
sends them in search of the rich treasures of the mind. 

We may rejoice, then, in such a critic as Macaulay, 
even if he was sometimes swayed by prejudice and was 
over-conscious of his own powers. In spite of being "at- 
tentive to his own applause," it cannot be denied that 
he had very many qualifications of a good literary critic. 

He possessed the rare faculty of seeing things as they 
really are. He also understood the English language as 
it ought to be written. He possessed a wide range of 
acquaintance with classic English, near and remote, and 
with ancient literature. He had a keen discrimination 
between fact and fancy, and was controlled by it in most 
of his criticisms. Above all he had a masterly style, and 
could say plainly and in the best manner what he had 
to say and meant to say. 

Take, for example, his skillful treatment, in this "Es- 
say on Addison," of the authoress, whose book on Addison 
furnished him the pretext for the Essay. He is about to 
find fault with her work, but begins by pleading for her 
"the immunities of her sex." He praises some of her 
other works ; excuses her failure in this instance, because 
"her studies have taken a different direction," and then 
speaks of the " reputation she has justly earned." Was 
ever a victim flayed alive with a more tender touch ? Did 
Izaak Walton ever put a frog upon his hook more kindly, 
and "as if he loved him"? 

But, to come now to tlie directly critical work of the 
essay on Addison, we will pass over the biographical pages 



10 THE CRITICAL ESSAY. 

and the essayist's assertiou that Addison was deficient in 
his knowledge of the Greek poets and the Latin prose 
writers, to Macaulay's criticism of Addison's first popular 
poem (page 40), " The Campaign," which laid the founda- 
tion of his political and poetical reputation. 

After condemning the fashion of versifiers like John 
Philips, who describe modern warfare after the manner 
of Homer, Macaulay gives Addison the credit of relating 
fact instead of fiction ; of praising Marlborough for energy, 
sagacity, and military science, instead of strength of muscle 
like that of Achilles, or skill in the tournament like that 
of a knight of the Middle Ages. He then singles out 
the comparison of Marlborough to an angel guiding the 
whirlwind, and explains the immense popularity of this 
''simile" by "the advantage which, in rhetoric and poetry, 
the particular has over the general." 

Again, passing rapidly over Macaulay's good taste as 
a critic in his portrayal of Addison's integrity, delicacy, 
social decorum, modesty, and rare gifts in conversation, 
notice (page 64) the touches of critical skill with which 
the essayist places the special genius of Addison on the 
pedestal of fame, and gives the reason for his eminence 
in the realm of letters, as a writer of the colloquial 
essay. 

The critic inscribes, as it were, on the fmir sides of 
the pedestal, in a few words, the characteristic elements 
of Addison's literary power. 

On the first tablet he Avrites : " He was tlie possessor of 
a vast mine, rich with a hundred ores ; . . . All at once, 
and by mere accident, he had lighted on an inexhaustible 



INTRODUCTION. 11 

vein of the purest gold "; "Never had the English language 
beL^n written (Macaulay refers to the papers by Addison 
in the Tatler and Spectator) with such sweetness, grace, 
and facility. But (we have now the second tablet) the 
still higher faculty of invention, Addison possessed in 
still larger measure." . . . "He could describe virtues, 
vices, habits, whims, as well as Clarendon ; but he could 
do something better. He could call human beings into 
existence, and make them exhibit themselves. If we wish 
anything more vivid, we must go either to Shakespeare or 
Cervantes." 

Tablet No. 3. " But Avhat shall we say of Addison's 
humor? We feel the charm; we give ourselves up to it; 
but we strive in vain to analyze it." Voltaire is "the 
prince of buffoons." Swift " moves laughter, but never 
joins in it. . . . The humor of Addison is of a more deli- 
cious flavor. If, as Soanie Jenyns oddly imagined, a portion 
of the happiness of seraphim and just men made perfect be 
derived from an exquisite perception of the ludicrous, their 
mirth must surely be none other than the mirth of Addison." 

Tablet No. 4. "Of the service which his essays rendered 
to morality, it is difficult to speak too highly. So effectu- 
ally, indeed, did he retort on vice, — the mockery which had 
recently been directed against virtue, — that, since his time, 
the open violation of decency has always been considered 
among us as the mark of a fool." The remainder of the 
essay analyzes the papers of the Spectator : gems of spar- 
kling praise are dropped by the essayist here and there : 
" Had Addison written a novel, it would have been superior 
to any that we possess." " There are no dregs in his wine." 



12 THE CRITICAL ESSAY. 

" He was not so far behind our generation as he was before 
his own." 

But these V)rilliant epigrams only reflect what the critic 
had already written : the remainder of the essay with- 
draws nothing from, and adds little to, the eulogy already 
spoken of Addison, as author of papers in the Spectator 
and first among the writers of belles-lettres in his age. 

There are long accounts of the relations of Addison with 
contemporaneous writers, and Macaulay takes great pains 
to clear away the aspersions on the good name of the popu- 
lar favorite, whose success excited the envy of his peers in 
authorship. 

He argues that the malignity of Pope towards Addison, 
the coolness of Swift, and the alienation of Steele were 
due to their jealousy and to their exasperation in presence 
of dignified calmness and serene politeness. 

Thus, the last part of Macaulay's essay lies somewhat 
outside the realm of literar^^ criticism. We may or may 
not hold with Macaulay, that the Addison who could on 
his deathbed ask pardon of a friend for an imaginary 
offense, of Avhich that friend retained no recollection, 
never could have stung the heart of a former com- 
panion with malicious satire, nor have treated with 
any injustice the claims of a rival author ; but this 
is not the legitimate work of the literary critic, and 
we mention it to show how Macaulay often indulges 
himself in controversy outside the definite scope of a 
literary review. 

And this leads to the charge, sometimes brought against 
JMacaulay as a critic, that he has favorite characters whom 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

he praises extravagantly, and characters that he dislikes 
whom he therefore blames immoderately. It is well to 
remember this trait in the great essayist, as we study 
the "Essay on Addison" from his pen. Evidently Addi- 
son was one whom Macanlay, for some reason, delighted 
to honor. 

As we read the papers in the Spectator, we enjoy their 
isimplicity, their pure English style, delicate humor, and 
lucid clearness of thought, — even if we find ourselves 
recalling a criticism by one who was himself a thorough 
master of the English tongue, to the effect tliat Addison 
"had not an intense mind ; he entertained no intense 
convictions. Truth never tormented him to give it utter- 
ance," * — and we can see how a critic would naturally be 
kind to him. 

Carlyle, in his " Essay on Ijurns," says " Criticism, it is 
sometimes thought, should be a cold business. We are not 
30 sure of this." But, however genial and charitable a 
literary judge ought to be, can he perform the functions of 
in impartial critic when his ])rc})ossessions are already 
strongly on the side of the autlun" whose work he is to 
judge ? 

To sum up, then, the qualities of true literary criticism, 
IS a beneficent and legitimate department of literary art, 
-here stands out, first and most important, the unbiased, 
lisinterested attitude of mind which can judge friend and 
■'oe impartially, on purely literary grounds. 

Next comes critical discernment, or insight, which is 
uore a gift than an acquisition ; nascitur, non Jit. A wide 
* Professor Austin Phelps. 



14 THE CRITICAL ESSAY. 

acquaintance with authors and their works, near and re-? 
mote, native and foreign, follows hard on the critical} 
insight, and, without this, the natural discernment of 
style cannot make the literary critic perfect in breadth oi 
view and largeness of mind. 

Moreover, the ethical principle has its part to play iW 
critical Avork, not oidy as it relates to disiuterestedncssj 
but also in regard to the conscientiousness with \\liiclM 
the critic does his work ; gathering and estimating the 
facts on which he relies for his opinions with the utmosti 
fidelity. Another important qualification of the literary^ 
critic is the high aim which he sets before him, of im-? 
proving, to the best of his ability, the literary work o:^ 
the age in which he lives. This true, construclive critiA 
cism emphasizes the good, and, while exposing the bad ini 
an author's style or material, keeps in a sul)ordinate 
})lace that which debases the public taste and the public 
morality in its reading and authorship. 

He who aspires to such work as a critic will gain much. 

r 

by a careful study of Macaulay, and Avill be fortunate if h^ 
can discover an author who rises anywhere near the height 
to Avhich Macaulay has raised Addison ; whom the essayisti 
calls, in his closing sentence, " the unsullied statesman, th^ 
accomplished scholar, the master of pure English eloquence,' 
the consuuimate painter of life and manners, . . . the great 
satirist, who alone knew how to use ridicule without abusi 
ing it; who, without inflicting a wound, effected a greaU 
social reform, and who reconciled wit and virtue, after at 
long and disastrous separation, during which wit had been 
led astray by profligacy, and virtue by fanaticism." 



MACAULAY'S ESSAY ON ADDISON. 



oJ«<o 



(July, 1843.) 
The Life of Joseph Addison. By Lucy Aikin. London : 1843. 

Some reviewers are of opinion that a lady who dares to 
publish a book renounces by that act the franchises apper- 
taining to her sex, and can claim no exception from the 
utmost rigor of critical procedure. From that opinion we 
dissent. We admit, indeed, that in a country which boasts 5 
of many female writers, eminently qualified by their tal- 
ents and acquirements to influence the public mind, it 
would be of most pernicious consequence that inaccurate 
history or unsound philosophy should be suffered to pass 
uncensured, merely because the offender chanced to be a 10 
lady. l)ut we conceive that, on such occasions, a critic 
would do well to imitate the courteous knight who found 
himself compelled by duty to keep the lists against Brada- 
mante. He, we are told, defended successfully the cause of 
which he was the champion; but, before the fight began, 15 
exchanged Balisarda for a less deadly sword, of which he 
carefully blunted the point and edge.* 

Nor are the immunities of sex the only immunities which 
Miss Aikin may rightfully plead. Several of her works, 
and especially the very pleasing Memoirs of the Reign of 20 
James the First, have fully entitled her to the privileges 
enjoyed by good writers. One of those privileges we hold 

* Orlando Furioso,i xlv., 68. 
15 



16 macaulay's essay 

to be this, that such writers, when, either from the un- 
lucky choice of a subject, or from the indolence too often 
produced by success, they happen to fail, shall not be sub- 
jected to the severe discipline which it is sometimes neces- 
5 sary to inflict upon dunces and impostors, but shall merely 
be reminded l^y a gentle touch, like that with which th4 
Laputan flapper roused his dreaming lord, that it is high 
time to wake.^ 

Our readers will probably infer from what we have said 

10 that Miss Aikin's book has disappointed us. The truth is, 
that she is not well acquainted with her subject. No per- 
son who is not familiar with the political and literary his- 
tory of England during the reigns of William the Third, of 
Anne, and of George the First, can possibly write a good 

15 life of Addison.^ Noav, we mean no reproach to Miss Aikin, 
and many will think that we pay her a compliment when 
we say that her studies have taken a different direction. 
She is better acquainted with Shakespeare and Raleigh than 
with Congreve and Prior ;^ and is far more at home among 

20 the ruffs and peaked beards of Theobald's ■* than among the 
Steenkirks ^ and flowing periwigs which surrounded Queen 
Anne's tea-table at Hampton. She seems to have written 
about the Elizabethan Age because she had read much 
about it ; she seems, on the other hand, to have read a lit- 

25 tie about the age of Addison because she had determined 
to write about it. The consequence is that she has had to 
describe men and things without having either a correct 
or a vivid idea of them, and that she has often fallen into 
errors of a very serious kind. Some of these errors we 

30 may, perhaps, take occasion to point out. But we have 
not time to point out one half of those which we have ob- 
served ; and it is but too likely that we may not have 
observed all those which exist. The reputation which Miss 
Aikin has justly earned stands so high, and the charm of 

35 Addison's letters is so great, that a second edition of this 



ON ADDISON. 17 

jifvork may probably be required. If so, we hope that every 
'paragraph will be revised, and that every date and fact 
ibout which there can be the smallest doubt will be care- 
j'^ully verified. 

To Addison himself we are bound by a sentiment as 5 
nuch like affection as any sentiment can be, which is in- 
' spired by one who has been sleeping a hundred and twenty 
years in Westminster Abbey. We trust, however, that this 
'feeling will not betray us into that abject idolatry which 
■\we have often had occasion to reprehend in others, andio 
■'which seldom fails to make both the idolater and the idol 
^ridiculous. A man of genius and virtue is but a man. All 
Ibis powers cannot be equally developed, nor can we expect 
'from him perfect self-knowledge. We need not, therefore, 
• hesitate to admit that Addison has left us some compo-i5 
'sitions which do not rise above mediocrity, some heroic 
poems hardly equal to Parnell's, some criticism as superfi- 
jaial as Dr. Blair's, and a tragedy not very much better than 
jDr. Johnson's. It is praise enough to say of a writer that, 
I in a high department of literature, in which many eminent 20 
writers have distinguished themselves, he has had no equal ; 
and this may with strict justice be said of Addison. 

As a man, he may not have deserved the adoration which 
tie received from those who, bewitched by his fascinating 
society, and indebted for all the comforts of life to his gen- 25 
erous and delicate friendship, worshiped him nightly in 
I lis favorite temple at Button's. But, after full inquiry and 
mpartial reflection, we have long been convinced that he 
ieserved as much love and esteem as can be justly claimed 
?y any of our infirm and erring race. Some blemishes may 30 
indoubtedly be detected in his character; but the more 
iarefully it is examined, the more will it appear, to use the 
Dhrase of the old anatomists, sound in the noble parts, free 
'rom all taint of perfidy, of cowardice, of cruelty^ of in- 
ijratitude, of envy. Men may easily be named in whom 35 



18 macaulay's essay ^^ 

some particular good disposition has been more conspicuous 
than in Addison. But the just harmony of qualities, the 
exact temper between the stern and the humane virtues, 
the habitual observance of every law, not only of moral 
5 rectitude but of moral grace and dignity, distinguish him 
from all men who have been tried by equally strong temp- 
tations, and about whose conduct we possess equally full 
information. 

His father was the Reverend Lancelot Addison, who, 

10 though eclipsed by his more celebrated son, made some 
figure in the world, and occupies with credit two folio 
pages in the Biographia Britannica. Lancelot was sent up, 
as a poor scholar, from Westmoreland to Queen's College, 
Oxford, in the time of the CommonAvealth, made some prog- 

15 ress in learning, became, like most of his fellow-students, 
a violent Eoyalist, lampooned the heads of the university, 
and was forced to ask pardon on his bended knees. When 
he had left- college, he earned a humble subsistence by read- 
ing the liturgy of the fallen Church to the families of those 

20 sturdy squires Avhose manor houses were scattered over the 
wild of Sussex. After the Restoration, his loyalty was 
rewarded with the post of chaplain to the garrison of Dun- 
kirk. When Dunkirk was sold to France, he lost his 
employment. But Tangier had been ceded by Portugal to 

25 England, as part of the marriage portion of the Infanta 
Catharine, and to Tangier Lancelot Addison was sent. A 
more miserable situation can hardly be conceived. It was 
difficult to say whether the unfortunate settlers were more 
tormented by the heats or by the rains, by the soldiers 

oO within the wall, or by the Moors without it. One advan- 
tage the chaplain had. He enjoyed an excellent oppor- 
tunity of studying the history and manners of Jews and 
Mohammedans ; and of this opportunity he appears to have 
made excellent use. On his return to England, after some 

35 years of banishment, he published an interesting volume on 



ON ADDISON. 19 

lAie Polity and Religion of Barbary, and another on the 
, Hebrew Customs and the State of Rabbinical Learning. 
He rose to eminence in his profession and became one of 
jthe royal chaplains, a Doctor of Divinity, Archdeacon of 
Salisbury, and Dean of Litchfield. It is said that he would o 
have been made a bishop after the Revolution if he had not 
^iven offense to the Government by strenuously opposing, 
in the Convocation of 1689, the liberal policy of William 
and Tillotson. 

In 1672, not long after Dr. Addison's return from Tan- 10 
gier, his son Joseph was born. Of Joseph's childhood we 
,know little. He learned his rudiments at schools in his 
J father's neighborhood, and was then sent to the Charter 
-House.' The anecdotes which are popularly related about 
, his boyish tricks do not harmonize very well with what we 15 
J know of his riper years. There remains a tradition that he 
jwas the ringleader in a barring out, and another tradition 
^that he ran away from school and hid himself in a wood, 
\ where he fed on berries and slept in a hollow tree, till, after 
.a long search, he was discovered and brought home. If 20 
these stories be true, it would be curious to know by what 
moral discipline so mutinous and enterprising a lad was 
transformed into the gentlest and most modest of men. 

We have abundant proof that, whatever Joseph's pranks 
may have been, he pursued his studies vigorously and sue- 25 
cessf ully. At fifteen he was not only fit for the university, 
but carried thither a classical taste and a stock of learning 
which would have done honor to a Master of Arts. He was 
entered at Queen's College, Oxford ; but he had not been 
many months there, when some of his Latin verses fell by 30 
accident into the hands of Dr. Lancaster, Dean of Mag- 
dalene College. The young scholar's diction and versifi- 
cation were already such as veteran professors might envy. 
Dr. Lancaster was desirous to serve a boy of such promise ; 
nor was an opportunity long wanting. The Revolution had 35 



20 macaulay's essay 

just taken place; and. nowhere had it been hailed with more 
delight than at Magdalene College. That great and opulent 
corporation had been treated, by James, and by his chan- 
cellor, with an insolence and injustice which, even in such a 

5 prince and in such a minister, may justly excite amazement^ 
and which had done more than even the prosecution of th^ 
bishops to alienate the Church of England from the throne 
A president, duly elected, had been violently expelled fro 
his dAvelling; a Papist had been set over the society by 

10 royal mandate ; the fellows who, in conformity with theifi 
oaths, had refused to submit to this usurper, had been^ 
driven forth from their quiet cloisters and gardens, to die 
of want or to live on charity. But the da}^ of redress and 
retribution speedily came. The intruders were ejected ; the 

15 venerable House was again inhabited by its old inmates; 
learning flourished under the rule of the wise and virtuous 
Hough; and Avith learning was united a mild and liberal 
spirit too often wanting in the princely colleges of Oxford. 
In consequence of the troubles through which the society 

20 had passed, there had been no valid election of new mem- 
bers during the year 1688. In 1689, therefore, there was 
twice the ordinary nvimber of vacancies ; and thus Dr. Lan- 
caster found it easy to procure for his young friend admit- 
tance to the advantages of a foundation then generally 

25 esteemed the wealthiest in Euro^je. 

At Magdalene, Addison resided during ten years. H 
was, at first, one of those scholars who are called Demies,' 
but was subsequently elected a fellow. His college is still 
proud of his name ; his portrait still hangs in the hall ; and 

30 strangers are still told that his faVorite walk was under the 
elms which fringe the meadow on the banks of the Cher- 
well. It is said, and is highly probable, that he was distin- 
guished among his fellow-students by the delicacy of his 
feelings, by the shyness of his manners, and by the assi- 

35 duity with which he often prolonged his studies far into the 



ON ADDISON. 21 

night. It is certain that his reputation for ability and 
jlearning stood high. Many years later, the ancient doctors 
of Magdalene continued to talk in their common room of 
his boyish compositions, and expressed their sorrow that 
^no copy of exercises so remarkable had been preserved. 5 

! It is proper, however, to remark that Miss Aikin has 
committed the error, very pardonable in a lady, of over- 
I rating Addison's classical attainments. In one department 
jof learning, indeed, his proficiency was such as it is hardly 
i possible to overrate. His knowledge of the Latin poets, lo 
from Lucretius and Catullus down to Claudian and Pru den- 
tins, was singularly exact and profound. He understood 
them thoroughly, entered into their spirit, and had the 
finest and most discriminating perception of all their pecul- 
iarities of style and melody ; nay, he copied their manner 15 
with admirable skill, and surpassed, we think, all their 
British imitators who had preceded him, Buchanan ^ and 
Milton alone excepted. This is high praise ; and beyond 
this we cannot with justice go. It is clear that Addison's 
serious attention during his residence at the university was 20 
almost entirely concentrated on Latin poetry, and that, if 
he did not wholly neglect other provinces of ancient litera- 
ture, he vouchsafed to them only a cursory glance. He 
does not appear to have attained more than an ordinary 
acquaintance with the political and moral writers of Rome ; 25 
nor was his own Latin prose by any means equal to his 
Latin verse. His knowledge of Greek, though doubtless 
such as was, in his time, thought respectable at Oxford, 
was evidently less than that which many lads now carry 
aAvay every year from Eton and Rugby. A minute examina- 30 
tion of his works, if we had time to make such an examination, 
would fully bear out these remai'ks. We will briefly advert 
to a few of the facts on which our judgment is grounded. 

Great praise is due to the Notes which Addison appended 
to his version of the second and third books of the Meta-35 



22 macaulay's essay 

morphoses. Yet those notes, while they show him to have 
been, in his own domain, an accomplished scholar, show 
also how confined that domain was. They are rich in ap- 
posite references to Virgil, Statins, and Claudian ; but they 
5 contain not a single illustration drawn from the Greek poets, j 
Now if, in the whole compass of Latin literature, there bej 
a passage which stands in need of illustration drawn from ' 
the Greek poets, it is the story of Pentheus in the third 
book of the Metamorphoses. Ovid was indebted for thatj 

10 story to Euripides and Theocritus, both of whom he has . 
sometimes followed minutely. Biit neither to Euripides norj 
to Theocritus does Addison make the faintest allusion ; and " 
we therefore believe that we do not wrong him by supposing 
that he had little or no knowledge of their works. 

in His travels in Italy, again, abound Avith classical quota- 
tions happily introduced ; but scarcely one of those quota- 
tions is in prose. He draws more illustrations from Auso- 
nius and Manilius than from Cicero. Even his notions of 
the political and military affairs of the Romans seem to be 

20 derived from poets and poetasters. Spots made memorable 
by events which have changed the destinies of the world, 
and which have been worthily recorded by great liistorians, 
bring to his mind only scraps of Pye or Hay ley. In the 
gorge of the Apennines he naturally remembers the hard- 

25 ships which Hannibal's army endured, and proceeds to 
cite, not the authentic narrative of Polybius, not the pic- 
turesque narrative of Livy, but the languid hexameters of 
Silius Italicus. On the banks of the Rubicon he. never 
thinks of Plutarch's lively description, or of the stern con- 

30 ciseness of the Commentaries, or of those letters to Atticus 
which so forcibly express the altJ^rnations of hope and fear 
in a sensitive mind at a great crisis. His only authority for 
the events of the civil war is Lucan. 

All the best ancient works of art at Rome and Florence 

35 are Greek. Addison saw them, however, without recalling 



ON ADDISON. 23 

one single verse of Pindar, of Callimachus, or of the Attic 
dramatists ; but they brought to his recollection innumer- 
able passages of Horace, Juvenal, Statins, and Ovid. 

The same may be said of the Treatise on Medals. In 
that pleasing work we find about three hundred passages 5 
extracted with great judgment from the Roman poets, but 
we do not recollect a single passage taken from any Roman 
orator or historian ; and we are confident that not a line is 
quoted from any Greek writer. No person who has derived 
all his information on the subject of medals from Addison lo 
would suspect that the Greek coins were in historical inter- 
est equal, and in beauty of execution far superior, to those 
of Rome. 

If it were necessary to find any further proof that Addi- 
son's classical knowledge was confined within narrow limits, 15 
that proof would be furnished by his Essay on the Evi- 
dences of Christianity. The Roman poets throw little or 
no light on the literary and historical questions which he 
is under the necessity of examining in that essay. He is, 
therefore, left completely in the dark ; and it is melancholy 20 
to see how helplessly he gropes his way from blunder to 
l)lunder. He assigns, as grounds for his religious belief, 
stories as absurd as that of the Cock-lane ghost,^ and for- 
geries as rank as Ireland's Vortigern ; - puts faith in the lie 
about the Thundering Legion,^ is convinced that Tiberius 25 
moved the senate to admit Jesus among the gods, and pro- 
nounces the letter of Agbarus,'' King of Edessa, to be a 
record of great authority. Nor were these errors the 
effects of superstition ; for to superstition Addison was by 
no means prone. The truth is that he was writing about so 
what he did not understand. 

Miss Aikin has discovered a letter, from which it appears 
that, while Addison resided at Oxford, he was one of several 
writers whom the booksellers engaged to make an English 
version of Herodotus; and she infers that he must have 35 



24 macaulay's essay 

been a good Greek scholar. We can allow very little weight 
to this argument, when we consider that his fellow-laborers 
were to have been Boyle and Blackmore. Boyle is remem- 
bered chiefly as the nominal author of the worst book on 

5 Greek history and philology that ever was printed ; and 
this book, bad as it is, Boyle was unable to produce without 
help. Of Blackmore's attainments in the ancient tongues, 
it may be sufficient to say that, in his prose, he has con- 
founded an aphorism with an apophthegm, and that when, 

10 in his verse, he treats of classical subjects, his habit is to 
regale his readers with four false quantities to a page. 

It is probable that the classical acquirements of Addison 
were of as much service to him as if they had been more 
extensive. The world generally gives its admiration, not to 

15 the man who does what nobody else even attempts to do, 
but to the man who does best what multitudes do well. 
Bentley was so immeasurably superior to all the other schol- 
ars of his time that few among them could discover his 
superiority. But the accomplishment in which Addison 

20 excelled his contemporaries was then, as it is now, highly 
valued and assiduously cultivated at all English seats of 
learning. Everybody who had been at a public school 
had written Latin verses ; many had written such verses 
with tolerable success, and were quite able to appreciate, 

25 though by no means able to rival, the skill with which Ad- 
dison imitated Virgil. His lines on the Barometer and 
the Bowling-green were applauded by himdreds, to whom 
the Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris was as unin- 
telligible as the hieroglyphics on an obelisk. 

30 Purity of style, and an easy flow of numbers, are common 
to all Addison's Latin poems. Our favorite piece is the 
Battle of the Cranes and Pygmies ; for in that piece we dis- 
cern a gleam of the fancy and humor which many years 
later enlivened thousands of breakfast tables. Swift boasted 

35 that he was never known to steal a hint ; and he certainly 



ON ADDISON. 25 

owed as little to his predecessors as any modern writer. 
Yet we cannot help suspecting that he borrowed, perhaps 
unconsciously, one of the happiest touches in his Voyage to 
Lilliput from Addison's verses. Let our readers judge. 

"The emperor," says Gulliver, "is taller by about the 5 
breadth of my nail than any of his court, which alone is 
enough to strike an awe into the beholders." 

About thirty years before Gulliver's Travels appeared, 
Addison wrote these lines : — 

' ' Jamque acies inter medias sese arduus inf ert 10 

Pygraeadum ductor, qui, majestate verendus, 
Incessuque gravis, reliquos supereminet omnes 
Mole gigantea, mediainque exsurgit in ulnain." 

The Latin poems of Addison were greatly and justly 
admired l)otli at Oxford and Cambridge, before his name 15 
had ever been heard by the Avits who thronged the coffee- 
houses round Drury Lane Theater. In his twenty-second 
year, he ventured to appear before the public as a writer 
of English verse. He addressed some complimentary lines 
to Dry den, who, after many triumphs and many reverses, 20 
had at length reached a secure and lonely eminence among 
the literary men of that age. Dryden appears to have been 
much gratified by the young scholar's praise ; and an inter- 
change of civilities and good offices followed. Addison was 
probabl}^ introduced by Dryden to Congreve, and was cer-25 
tainly presented by Congreve to Charles Montague, who was 
then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and leader of the AVhig 
party in the House of Commons.^ 

At this time Addison seemed inclined to devote himself 
to poetry. He published a translation of part of the fourth MO 
Georgic, Lines to King William, and other performances of 
equal value, that is to say, of no value at all. But in those 
days the public was in the habit of receiving with applause 
pieces which Avouhl now have little chance of obtaining the 



26 macaulay's essay 

aSTewdigate prize or the Seatonian prize. And the reason is 
obvious. The heroic coiiplet was then the favorite meas- 
ure. The art of arranging words in that measure, so that 
the lines may flow smoothly, that the accents may fall cor- 

5 rectly, that the rhymes may strike the ear strongly, and 
that there may be a pause at the end of every distich, is an 
art as mechanical as that of mending a kettle or shoeing a 
horse, and may be learned by any human being who has 
sense enough to learn anything. But, like other mechanical 

10 arts, it was gradually improved by means of many experi- 
ments and many failures. It was reserved for Pope to 
discover the trick, to make himself complete master of it, 
and to teach it to everybody else. From the time when his 
Pastorals appeared, heroic versification became matter of 

in rule and compass ; and, before long, all artists were on a 
level. Hundreds of dunces who never blundered on one 
happy thought or expression were able to write reams of 
couplets which, as far as euphony was concerned, could not 
be distinguished from those of Pope himself, and which 

20 very clever writers of the reign of Charles the Second, — 
Rochester, for example, or Marvel, or Oldham, — would have 
contemplated with admiring despair. 

Ben Jonson was a great man, Hoole a very small man. 
But Hoole, coming after Pope, had learned how to manu- 

25 facture decasyllabic verses, and poured them forth by thou- 
sands and tens of thousands, all as well turned, as smooth, 
and as like each other as the blocks which have passed 
through Mr. Brunei's mill in the dockyard at Portsmouth. 
Ben's heroic couplets resemble blocks rudely hewn out by 

30 an unpracticed hand, with a blunt hatchet. Take as a speci- 
men his translation of a celebrated passage in the /Eneid : — 

" This child our parent earth, stirr'd up with spite 
Of all the gods, brought forth, and, as some write, 
She was last sister of that giant race 
35 That sought to scale Jove's court, right swift of pace, 



ON ADDISON. 27 

And swifter far of wing, a monster vast 

And dreadful. Look, how many plumes are placed 

On her huge corpse, so many waking eyes 

Stick underneath, and, which may stranger rise 

In the report, as many tongues she wears." 5 

Compare with these jagged, misshapen distichs the neat 
fabric which Hoole's machine produces in unlimited abun- 
dance. We take the first lines on which we open in his 
version of Tasso. They are neither better nor worse than 
the rest : — lO 

" thou, whoe'er thou art, whose steps are led. 
By choice or fate, these lonely shores to tread, 
No greater wonders east or west can boast 
Than yon small island on the pleasing coast. 
If e'er thy sight would blissful scenes explore, 15 

The current pass, and seek the further shore." 

Ever since the time of Pope there lias been a glut of lines 
of this sort ; and we are now as little disposed to admire a 
man for being able to write them as for being able to write 
his name. But in the days of William the Third such ver- 20 
sifi cation was rare ; and a rhymer who had any skill in it 
passed for a great poet, just as in the dark ages a person 
Avho could write his name passed for a great clerk. Accord- 
ingly Duke, Stepney, Granville, Walsh, and others whose 
only title to fame was that they said in tolerable meter 25 
what might as well have been said in prose, or ^vhat was 
not worth saying at all, were honored with marks of dis- 
tinction Avhich ought to be reserved for genius. With these 
Addison must have ranked, if he had not earned true and 
lasting glory by performances wdiich very little resembled 30 
his juvenile poems. 

Dryden was now busied with Virgil, and obtained from 
Addison a critical preface to the Georgics. In return for 
this service, and for other services of the same kind, the 
veteran poet, in the postscript to the translation of the 35 



28 macaulay's essay 

^neid, complimented his young friend with great liberality, 
and indeed with more liberality than sincerity. He affected 
to be afraid that his own performance would not sustain a 
comparison with the version of the fourth Georgic, by " the 
5 most ingenious Mr. Addison of Oxford." " After his bees," 
added Dryden, " my latter swarm is scarcely worth the 
hiving." 

The time had now arrived when it was necessary for 
Addison to choose a calling. Everything seemed to point 

10 his course toward the clerical profession. His habits were 
regular, his opinions orthodox. His college had large eccle- 
siastical preferment in its gift, aud boasts that it has given 
at least one bishop to almost every see in England. l)r. 
Lancelot Addison held an honorable place in the Church, 

15 and had set his heart on seeing his son a clergyman. It is 
clear, from some expressions in the young man's rhymes, 
that his intention was to take orders. But Charles Mon- 
tague interfered. Montague had first brought himself into 
notice by verses, well timed and not contemptibly written, 

20 but never, we think, rising above mediocrity. Fortunately 
for himself and for his country, he early quitted poetry, 
in which he could never have attained a rank as high as 
that of Dorset or Rochester, and turned his mind to official 
and parliamentary business. It is written that the ingen- 

25 ious person who undertook to instruct Rasselas, Prince of 
Abyssinia, in the art of flying, ascended an eminence, 
waved his wings, sprung into the air, and instantly dropped 
into the lake. But it is added that the wings, Avhich were 
unable to support him through the sky, bore him up effectu- 

:;i) ally as soon as he was in the water. This is no bad type 
of the fate of Charles Montague, and of men like him. 
When he attempted to soar into the regions of poetical 
invention, he altogether failed; but as soon as he had 
descended from that ethereal elevation into a lower and 

35 grosser element, his talents instantly raised him above 



ON ADDISON. 29 

the mass. He became a distinguished financier, debater, 
courtier, and party leader. He still retained his fondness 
for the pursuits of his early days ; but he showed that 
fondness not by wearying the public with his own feeble 
performances, but by discovering and encouraging literary 5 
excellence in others. A crowd of wits and poets, who could 
easily have vanquished him as a competitor, revered him 
as a judge and a patron. In his plans for the encourage- 
ment of learning, he was cordially supported by the ablest 
and most virtuous of his colleagues, the Lord Keeper 10 
Somers.^ Though both these great statesmen had a sincere 
love of letters, it was not solely from a love of letters that 
they were desirous to enlist youths of high intellectual 
qualifications in the public service. The Revolution had 
altered the whole system of government. Before that 15 
event, the Press had been controlled by censors, and the 
Parliament had sat only two months in eight years. Now 
the Press was free, and had begun to exercise unprecedented 
influence on the public mind. Parliament met annually, 
and sat long. The chief power in the State had passed to 20 
the House of Commons. At such a conjuncture, it was 
natural that literary and oratorical talents should rise in 
value. There was danger that a government which neg- 
lected such talents might be subverted by them. It was, 
therefore, a profound and enlightened policy which led 25 
Montague and Somers to attach such talents to the Whig 
party, by the strongest ties both of interest and of gratitude. 
It is remarkable that in a neighboring country we have 
recently seen similar effects follow from similar causes. 
The Eevolution of July, 1830, established representative ;5o 
government in France. The men of letters instantly rose 
to the highest importance in the State. At the present 
moment most of the persons whom Ave see at the head 
both of the administration and of the opposition have been 
ju-ofessors, historians, journalists, poets. The influence of 3.5 



30 macaulay's essay 



the literary class in England, during the generation which 
followed the Revolution, was great, but by no means so 
great as it has lately been in France; for, in England, the 
aristocracy of intellect had to contend with a powerful and 
5 deeply rooted aristocracy of a very different kind. France 
had no Somersets and Shrewsburys to keep down her Addi- 
sons and Priors. 

It was in the year 1G99, when Addison had just completed 
his twenty-seventh year, that the course of his life was 
10 finally determined. Both the great chiefs of the ministry 
were kindly disposed towards him. In political opinions 
he already was what he continued to be through life, a firm, 
though a moderate, Whig. He had addressed the most pol- 
ished and vigorous of his early English lines to Somers, 
15 and had dedicated to Montague a Latin poem, truly Vir- 
gilian, both in style and rhythm, on the Peace of liyswick.^ 
The wish of the young poet's great friends was, it should 
seem, to employ him in the service of the crown abroad. 
But an intimate knowledge of the French language was 
20 a qualification indispensable to a diplomatist ; and this 
qualification Addison had not acquired. It was, therefore, 
thought desirable that he should pass some time on the 
Continent in preparing himself for official employment. 
His own means were not such as would enable him to 
25 travel, but a pension of three hundred pounds a year was 
procured for him by the interest of the lord chancellor. 
It seems to have been apprehended that some difficulty 
might be started by the rulers of Magdalene College. But 
the Chancellor of the Exchequer wrote in the strongest 
;u terms to Hough. The State — such was the purport of 
Montague's letter — could not, at that time, spare to the 
Church such a man as Addison. Too many high civil posts 
were already occupied by adventurers, who, destitute of 
every liberal art and sentiment, at once pillaged and dis- 
c's graced th^ country which they pretended to serve. It had 



ON ADDISON. 31 

joecome necessary to recruit for the public service from a , 
very different class, from that class of which Addison was 
bhe representative. The close of the minister's letter was 
Ifemarkable. "I am called," he said, "an enemy of the 
Church. But I will never do it any other injury than 5 
keeping Mr. Addison out of it." 

This interference was successful; and, in the summer of 
1699, Addison, made a rich man by his pension, and still 
retaining his fellowship, quitted his beloved Oxford, and 
set out on his travels. He crossed from Dover to Calais, 10 
proceeded to Paris, and was received there with great kind- 
ness and politeness by a kinsman of his friend Montague, 
Charles, Earl of Manchester, who had just been appointed 
ambassador to the court of France. The countess, a Whig 
and a toast, ^ was probably as gracious as her lord; for 15 
Addison long retained an agreeable recollection of the im- 
pression which she at this time made on him, and, in some 
lively lines written on the glasses of the Kit Cat Club, de- 
scribed the envy which her cheeks, glowing with the genuine 
bloom of England, had excited among the painted beauties 20 
Df Versailles. 

Louis the Fourteenth was at this time expiating the vices 
Df his youth by a devotion which had no root in reason, and 
oore no fruit of charity. The servile literature of France 
liad changed its character to suit the changed character of 25 
:he prince. No book appeared that had not an air of sanc- 
jity. Racine, who was just dead, had passed the close of 
ills life in writing sacred dramas ; and Dacier was seeking 
tor the Athauasian mysteries in Plato. Addison described 
:his state of things in a short but lively and graceful letter 30 
"0 Montague. Another letter, written about the same time 
jO the lord chancellor, conveyed the strongest assurances of 
:^ratitude and attachment. "The only return I can make 
so your lordship," said Addison, "will be to apply myself 
mtirely to my business." With this view he quitted Paris 35 



32 macaulay's essay 

, and repaired to Blois, a place where it was supposed that 
the French language was spoken in its highest purity, and 
where not a single Englishman could be found. Here he 
passed some months pleasantly and profitably. Of his way 

5 of life at Blois, one of his associates, an abbe named Phil- 
ippeaux, gave an account to Joseph Spence. If this ac- 
count is to be trusted, Addison studied much, mused much, 
talked little, had fits of absence, and either had no love 
affairs, or was too discreet to confide them to the abbe. A 

10 man who, even when surrounded by fellow-countrymen 
and fellow-students, had always been remarkably shy and 
silent, was not likely to be loquacious in a foreign tongue, 
and among foreign companions. But it is clear from Ad- 
dison's letters, some of which were long after published in 

15 The Guardian,^ that, while he appeared to be absorbed in 
his own meditations, he was really observing French soci- 
ety with that keen and sly, yet not ill-natured, side glance 
which was peculiarly his own. 

From Blois he returned to Paris; and, having nowmas- 

20tered the French language, found great pleasure in the 
society of French philosophers and poets. He gave an ac- 
count, in a letter to Bishop Hough, of two highly interest- 
ing conversations, one with Malebranche,'^ the other with 
Boileau.^ Malebranche expressed great partiality for the 

25 English, and extolled the genius of Newton, but shook his 
head when Hobbes was mentioned, and was indeed so unjust 
as to call the author of the Leviathan a poor silly creature. 
Addison's modesty restrained him from fully relating, in 
his letter, the circumstances of his introduction to Boileau. 

; Boileau, having survived the friends and rivals of his youth, 
old, deaf, and melancholy, lived in retirement, seldom went 
either to court or to the Academy, and was almost inacces- 
sible to strangers. Of the English and of English litera- 
ture he knew nothing. He had hardly heard the name of 

35 Dry den. Some of our countrymen, in the warmth of their 



ON ADDISON. 33 

patriotism, have asserted that this ignorance must have 
been affected. We own that we see no ground for such a 
supposition. English literature was to the French of the 
age of Louis the Fourteenth what German literature was 
to our own grandfathers. Very few, we suspect, of the 5 
accomplished men who, sixty or seventy years ago, used to 
dine in Leicester Square with Sir Joshua, or at Streatham 
with Mrs. Thrale,^ had the slightest notion that Wieland 
was one of the first wits and poets, and Lessing, bej'^ond all 
dispute, the first critic in Europe. Boileau knew just as 10 
little about the Paradise Lost, and about Absalom and 
Achitophel; but he had read Addison's Latin poems, and 
admired them greatly. They had given him, he said, quite 
a new notion of the state of learning and taste among the 
English. Johnson will have it that these praises were in- 15 
sincere. "Nothing," says he, "is better known of Boileau 
than that he had an injudicious and peevish contempt of 
modern Latin; and therefore his profession of regard was 
probably the effect of liis civility rather than approbation." 
Now, nothing is better known of Boileau than that he was 20 
singularly sparing of compliments. We do not remember 
that either friendship or fear ever induced him to bestow 
praise on any composition which he did not approve. On 
literary questions, his caustic, disdainful, and self-confi- 
dent spirit rebelled against that authority to which every- 25 
thing else in France bowed down. He had the spirit to 
tell Louis the Fourteenth, firmly and even rudely, that his 
majesty knew nothing about poetry, and admired verses 
which were detestable. What was there in Addison's jDosi- 
tion that could induce the satirist, whose stern and fastidi- 30 
ous temper had been the dread of two generations, to turn 
sycophant for the first and last time? Nor was Boileau' s 
contempt of modern Latin either injudicious or peevish. 
He thought, indeed, that no poem of the first order would 
ever be written in a dead lantruaure. And did he think 35 



34 macaulay's essay 

1 

amiss? Has not the experience of centuries confirmed his 
opinion? Boileau also thought it probable that, in the best 
modern Latin, a writer of the Augustan Age would have 
detected ludicrous improprieties. And who can think 

5 otherwise? What modern scholar can honestly declare that 
he sees the smallest impurity in the style of Livy? Yet) 
is it not certain that, in the style of Livy, Pollio,^ whose 
taste had been formed on the banks of the Tiber, detected 
the inelegant idiom of the Po? Has any modern scholar 

10 understood Latin better than Frederic the Great understood 
French? Yet is it' not notorious that Frederic the Great, 
after reading, speaking, writing French, and nothing but 
French, during more than half a century, after unlearningj 
his mother-tongue in order to learn French, after living' 

15 familiarly during many years with French associates, could 
not, to the last, compose in French, without imminent risk 
of committing some mistake which would have moved a 
smile in the literary circles of Paris? Do we believe that 
Erasmus and Fracastorius wrote Latin as well as Dr. Rob- 

20ertson and Sir Walter Scott wrote English? And are there 
not in the Dissertation on Lidia, the last of Dr. Robertson's 
works, in Waverley, in Marmion, Scotticisms at which a 
London apprentice would laugh? But does it follow, 
because we think thus, that we can find nothing to admire 

25 in the noble alcaics of Gray, or in the playful elegiacs of 
Vincent Bourne? Surely not. Nor was Boileau so igno- 
rant or tasteless as to be incapable of appreciating good 
modern Latin. In the very letter to which Johnson alludes, 
Boileau says, " Ne croyez pas pourtant que je veuille par la 

30 blanier les vers Latins que vous m'avez envoyes d'un de 
vos illustres acad^miciens. Je les ai trouves fort beaux, et 
dignes de Vida et de Sannazai*, mais non pas d' Horace et 
de Virgile." Several poems, in modern Latin, have been 
praised by Boileau quite as liberally as it was his habit 

35 to praise anything. He says, for example, of the Pere 



ON ADDISON. 35 

Fraguier's epigrams, that Catullus seems to have come to 

life again. But the best proof that Boileau did not feel 

the uudisceruing contempt for modern Latin verses which 

' has been imputed to him is,' that he wrote and published 

' Latin verses in several meters. Indeed, it happens, curi- 5 

ously enough, that the most severe censure ever pronounced 

j by him on modern Latin is conveyed in Latin hexameters. 

i We allude to the fragment which begins — 

I 

I " Quid immeris iteruiu me balbutire Latiuis, 

Louge Alpes citra uatuiu de patre Sicambro, 10 

Musa, jubes?" 

' For these reasons we feel assured that the praise which 
Boileau bestowed on the Machinae Gesticulantes and the 
Gerano-Pygmteomachia was sincere. He certain!}'' opened 

! himself to Addison with a freedom which was a sure indi- 15 
cation of esteem. Literature was the chief subject of con- 

I versation. The old man talked on his favorite theme much 

i and well — indeed, as his young hearer thought, incompar- 
ably well. Boileau had undoubtedly some of the qualities 
of a great critic. He wanted imagination; but he had 20 
strong sense. His literary code was formed on narrow 
principles; but in applying it, he showed great judgment 
and penetration. In mere style, abstracted from the ideas 
of which style is the garb, his taste was excellent. He was 
well acquainted with the great Greek writers ; and, though 25 
unable fully to appreciate their creative genius, admired 
the majestic simplicity of their manner, and had learned 
from them to despise bombast and tinsel. It is easy, we 
think, to discover, in The Spectator and The Guardian, 
traces of the influence, in part salutary and in part perni- ^ 
cious, which the mind of Boileau had on the mind of 
Addison. 

While Addison was at Paris, an event took place which 
made that capital a disagreeable residence for an English- 



) 36 macaulay's essay 

man and a Whig. Charles, second of the name, King of 
Spain, died; and bequeathed his dominions to Philip, Duke 
of Anjou, a younger son of the Dauphin. The King of 
France, in direct violation of his engagements both with 

5 Great Britain and with the States General, accepted the 
bequest on behalf of his grandson. The house of Bourbon 
was at the summit of human grandeur. England had been 
outwitted, and found herself in a situation at once degrad- 
ing and perilous. The people of France, not presaging the 

10 calamities by which they were destined to expiate the per- 
fidy of their sovereign, went mad with pride and delight. 
Everyman looked as if a great estate had just been left him. 
"The French conversation," said Addison, "begins to 
grow insupportable; that which was before the vainest 

15 nation in the world is now worse than ever." Sick of 
the arrogant exultation of the Parisians, and probably fore- 
seeing that the peace between France and England could 
not be of long duration, he set off for Italy. 

In December, 1700, he embarked at Marseilles. As he 

20 glided along the Ligurian coast, ^ he was delighted by the 
sight of myrtles and olive trees, which retained their ver- 
dure under the winter solstice. Soon, however, he en- 
countered one of the black storms of the Mediterranean. 
The captain of the ship gave up all for lost, and confessed 

25 himself to a Capuchin who happened to be on board. The 
English heretic, in the mean time, fortified himself against 
the terrors of death with devotions of a very different kind. 
How strong an impression this perilous voyage made on 
him appears from the ode, " How are thy servants blest, 

30 Lord! "^ which was long after published in The Spectator. 
After some days of discomfort and danger, Addison was 
glad to land at Savona, and to make his way over moun- 
tains, where no road had yet been hewn out by art, to the 
city of Genoa. 

35 At Genoa, still ruled by her own Doge, and by the nobles 



ON ADDISON. 37 

whose names were inscribed on her Book of Gold, Addison 
made a short stay. He admired the narrow streets over- 
liung by long lines of towering palaces, the walls rich with 
frescoes, the gorgeous temple of the Annunciation, and the 
tapestries whereon were recorded the long glories of the 5 
house of Doria. Thence he hastened to Milan, where he 
contemplated the Gothic magnificence of the cathedral with 
more wonder than pleasure. He passed Lake Benacus while 
a gale was blowing, and saw the waves raging as they raged 
when Virgil looked upon them. At Venice, then the gayest lo 
spot in Europe, the traveler spent the Carnival, the gayest 
season of the year, in the midst of masques, dances, and 
serenades. Here he was at once diverted and provoked by 
the absurd dramatic pieces which then disgraced the Italian 
stage. To one of those pieces, however, he was indebted 15 
for a valuable hint. He was present when a ridiculous play 
on the death of Cato was performed. Cato, it seems, was 
in love with a daughter of Scipio. The lady had given her 
heart to Csesar. The rejected lover determined to destroy 
himself. He appeared seated in his library, a dagger in 20 
his hand, a Plutarch and Tasso before him; and, in this 
position, he pronounced a soliloquy before he struck the 
blow. We are surprised that so remarkable a circumstance 
as this should have escaped the notice of all Addison's 
biographers. There cannot, we conceive, be the smallest 25 
doubt that this scene, in spite of its absurdities and anach- 
ronisms, struck the traveler's imagination, and suggested 
to him the thought of bringing Cato on the English stage. 
It is well known that about this time he began his tragedy, 
and that he finished the first four acts before he returned 30 
to England. 

On his way from Venice to Kome, he was drawn some 
miles out of a beaten road, by a wish to see the smallest 
independent state in Europe. On a rock where the snow 
still lay, though the Italian spring was now far advanced, 35 



38 macaulay's essay 

was perched the little fortress of San Marino. The roads 
which led to the secluded town were so bad that few travel- 
ers had ever visited it, and none had ever published an 
account of it. Addison could not suppress a good-natured 
5 smile at the simple manners and iustitutions of this singular 
community. But he observed, witli the exultation of a 
Whig, that the rude mountain tract which formed the terri- 
tory of the republic swarmed with an honest, healthy, and 
contented peasantry, while the rich plain which surrounded 

10 the metropolis of civil and spiritual tyranny was scarcely 
less desolate than the uncleared wilds of America. 

At Rome Addison remained on his first visit only long 
enough to catch a glimpse of St. Peter's and of the Pan- 
theon. His haste is the more extraordinary because the 

15 Holy Week was close at hand. He has given no hint 
which can enable us to pronounce why he chose to fly from 
a spectacle which every year allures from distant regions 
persons of far less taste and sensibility than his. Possibly, 
traveling, as he did, at the charge of a government distin- 

20guished by its enmity to the Church of Rome, he may have 
thought that it would be imprudent in him to assist at the 
most magnificent rite of that Church. Many eyes would 
be upon him; and he might find it diflicult to behave in 
such a manner as to give offense neither to his patrons in 

'25 England, nor to those among whom he resided. Whatever 
his motives may have been, he turned his back on the most 
august and affecting ceremony which is known among men, 
and posted along the Appian Way to Naples. 

Naples was then destitute of what are now, perhaps, its 

30 chief attractions. The lovely bay and the awful mountain 
were indeed there. But a farm-house stood on the theater 
of Herculaneum, and rows of vines grew over the streets of 
Pompeii. The temples of Psestum ^ had not, indeed, been 
hidden from the eye of man by any great convulsion of 

o5 nature; but, strange to say, their existence was a secret 



ON ADDISON. 39 

even to artists and antiquaries. Though situated within a 
ifew hours' journey of a great capital, where Salvator had 
not long before painted, and where Vico was then lecturing, 
those noble remains were as little known to Europe as the 
ruined cities overgrown by the forests of Yucatan. What 5 
was to be seen at Naples, Addison saw. He climbed Vesu- 
vius, explored the tunnel of Posilipo, and wandered among 
the vines and almond trees of Caprege. But neither the 
wonders of nature nor those of art could so occupy his atten- 
tion as to prevent him from noticing, though cursorily, the 10 
abuses of the Government and the misery of the people. 
The great kingdom which had just descended to Philip the 
Fifth ^ was in a state of paralytic dotage. Even Castile 
and Aragon were sunk in wretchedness. Yet, compared 
with the Italian dependencies of the Spanish crown, Castile 15 
and Aragon might be called prosperous. It is clear that 
all the observations Avhich Addison made in Italy tended to 
confirm him in tlie political opinions which he had adopted 
at home. To the last, he always spoke of foreign travel as 
the best cure for Jacobitism. In his Freeholder, the Tory 20 
fox-hunter asks what traveling is good for, except to teach 
a man to jabber French, and to talk against passive 
obedience. 

From Naples Addison returned to Rome by sea along the 
coast which his favorite Virgil had celebrated. The felucca 25 
passed the headland where the oar and trumpet were placed 
l)y the Trojan adventurers on the tomb of Misenus," and 
anchored at night under the shelter of the fabled promon- 
tory of Circe. The voyage ended in the Tiber, still over- 
hung with dark verdure, and still turbid with yellow sand, .'50 
as when it met the eyes of .■Eneas. From the ruined port 
of Ostia the stranger hurried to Rome; and at Rome he 
remained during those hot and sickly months when, even 
in the Augustan Age, all who could make their escape fled 
from mad dogs and from streets black with funerals, toss 



40 macaulay's essay 

gather the first figs of the season in the country. It is 
probable that, when he, long after, poured forth in verse 
his gratitude to the Providence which had enabled him to 
breathe unhurt in tainted air, he was thinking of the August 
5 and September which he passed at Rome. 

It was not till the latter end of October that he tore him- 
self away from the masterpieces of ancient and modern art 
which are collected in the city so long the mistress of the 
world. He then journeyed northward, passed through 

10 Siena, and for a moment forgot his prejudices in favor of 
classic architecture as he looked on the magnificent cathe- 
dral. At Florence he spent some days with the Duke of 
Shrewsbury,^ who, cloyed with the pleasures of ambition, 
and impatient of its pains, fearing both parties, and loving 

15 neither, had determined to hide in an Italian retreat talents 
and accomplishments which, if they had been united with 
fixed principles and civil courage, might have made him 
the foremost man of his age. These days, we are told, 
passed pleasantly ; and we can easily believe it. For Addi- 

20 son was a delightful companion when he was at his ease; 
and the Duke, though he seldom forgot that he was a Tal- 
bot, had the invaluable art of putting at ease all who came 
near him. 

Addison gave some time to Florence, and especially to 

25 the sculptures in the Museum, which he preferred even to 
those of the Vatican. He then pursued his journey through 
a country in which the ravages of the last war were still 
discernible, and in which all men were looking forward 
with dread to a still fiercer conflict. Eugene ^ had already 

30 descended from the Rhsetian Alps to dispute with Catinat 
the rich plain of Lombardy. The faithless ruler of Savoy 
was still reckoned among the allies of Louis. England had 
not yet actually declared war against France; but Man- 
chester had left Paris ; and the negotiations which produced 

35 the Grand Alliance against the house of Bourbon were iu 



, ON ADDISON. 41 

'iprogress. Under such circumstances, it was desirable for 
q&n English traveler to reach neutral ground without delay, 
i Addison resolved to cross Mont Cenis. It was December; 
land the road was very different from that which now re- 
minds the stranger of the power and genius of Napoleon. 5 
■ The winter, however, was mild; and the passage was, for 
i those times, easy. To this journey Addison alluded when, 
I in the ode which we have already quoted, he said that for 
him the Divine goodness had "warmed the hoary Alpine 
hills." 10 

It was in the midst of the eternal snow that he composed 
his Epistle to his friend Montague, now Lord Halifax. 
That Epistle, once widely renowned, is now known only to 
curious readers, and will hardly be considered by those to 
whom it is known as in any perceptible degree heightening 15 
Addison's fame. It is, however, decidedly superior to any 
English composition which he had previously published. 
Nay, we think it quite as good as any poem in heroic 
meter which appeared during the interval between the death 
of Dryden and the publication of the Essay on Criticism. 20 
It contains passages as good as the second-rate passages of 
Pope, and would have added to the rei^utation of Parnell 
or Prior. 

But, whatever be the literary merits or defects of the 
Epistle, it undoubtedly does honor to the principles and 25 
spirit of the author. Halifax had now nothing to give. 
He had fallen from power, had been held up to obloquy, 
had been impeached by the House of Commons, and, 
though his peers had disinissed the impeachment, had, as 
it seemed, little chance of ever again filling high oiUce. ;>o 
The Epistle, written at such a time, is one among many 
proofs that there was no mixture of cowardice or meanness 
in the suavity and moderation which distinguished Addison 
from all the other public men of those stormy times. 

At Geneva the traveler learned that a partial change of 35 



42 macaulay's essay 

ministry had taken place in England, and that the Earl of 
Manchester had become Secretary of State. Manchester 
exerted himself to serve his young friend. It was thought 
advisable that an English agent should be near the person 

5 of Eugene in Italy 5 and Addison, whose diplomatic edu-' 
cation was now hnished, was the man selected. He was 
preparing to enter on his honorable functions, when all his 
prospects were for a time darkened by the death of William 
the Third. 

10 Anne had long felt a strong aversion, personal, political, 
and religious, to the Whig party. That aversion appeared 
in the first jneasures of her reign. Manchester was deprived 
of the seals, after he had held them only a few weeks. 
Neither Somers nor Halifax was sworn of the privy coun- 

I5cil. Addison shared the fate of his three patrons. His 
hopes of employment in the public service were at an end; 
his pension was stopped; and it was necessary for him to 
support himself by his own exertions. He became tutor to 
a young English traveler, and appears to have rambled with 

20 his pupil over a great part of Switzerland and Germany. 
At this time he wrote his pleasing treatise on Medals. It 
was not published till after his death; but several distin- 
guished scholars saw the manuscript, and gave just praise 
to the grace of the style, and to the learning and ingenuity 

23 evinced by the quotations. 

From Germany Addison repaired to Holland, where he 
learned the melancholy news of his father's death. After 
passing some months in the United Provinces, he returned 
about the close of the year 1703 to England. He was there 

30 cordially received by his friends, and introduced by them 
into the Kit Cat Club, a society in which were collected 
all the various talents and accomplishments which then 
gave luster to the Whig party. 

Addison was, during some months after his return from 

35 the Continent, hard pressed by pecuniary difficulties. But 



ON ADDISON. 43 

hit was soon in the power of liis noble patrons to serve him 
lisffectually. A political change, silent and gradual, but of 
ithe highest importance, was in daily progress. The acces- 
Jsion of Anne had been hailed by the Tories with transports 
• of joy and hope; and for a time it seemed that the Whigs 5 
;had fallen never to rise again. The throne was surrounded 
:by men supposed to be attached to the prerogative and to 
I the Church; and among these none stood so high in the 
favor of the sovereign as the Lord-treasurer Godolphin and 
the Captain-general Marlborough.^ 10 

The country gentlemen and country clergymen had fully 
expected that the policy of these ministers would be directly 
opposed to that which had been almost constantly followed 
by William ; that the landed interest would be favored at 
the expense of trade ; that iio addition would be made to 15 
the funded debt; that the privileges conceded to Dissenters 
by the late king would be curtailed, if not withdrawn ; that 
the war with France, if there must be such a war, would, 
on our part, be almost entirely naval ; and that the Govern- 
ment would avoid close connections with foreign powers, 20 
and, above all, with Holland. 

But the country gentlemen and country clergymen were 
fated to be deceived, not for the last time. The prejudices 
and passions which raged without control in vicarages, in 
cathedral closes, and in the manor houses of fox-hunting 25 
squires, were not shared by the chiefs of the ministry. 
Those statesmen saw that it was both for the public inter- 
est and for their own interest to adopt a Whig policy, at 
least as respected the alliances of the country and the con- 
duct of the war. But if the foreign policy of the Whigs 30 
were adopted, it was impossible to abstain from adopting 
also their financial policy. The natural consequences fol- 
lowed. The rigid Tories were alienated from the Govern- 
ment. The votes of the Whigs became necessary to it. 
Tlie votes of the Whigs could be secured only by further 35 



■14 macaulay's essay 1 

concessions; and further concessions the queen was induced 
to make. 

At the beginning of the year 1704, the state of parties 
bore a close analogy to the state of parties in 1826. In i 

5 182G, as in 1704, there was a Tory ministry divided intcj | 
two hostile sections. The position of Mr, Canning and his 
friends in 1826 corresponded to that which- Marlborough 
and Godolphin occupied in 1704. Nottingham and Jersey 
were, in 1704, what Lord Eklon and Lord Westmoreland 

10 were in 1826. The Whigs of 1704 were in a situation re- 
sembling that in which the Whigs of 1826 stood. In 1704, 
Somers, Halifax, Sunderland, Cowper, were not in office. 
There was no avowed coalition between them and the moder- 
ate Tories. It is probable that no direct communication 

15 tending to such a coalition had yet taken place ; yet all men 
saw that such a coalition was inevitable, nay, that it was 
already half formed. Such, or nearly such, was the state 
of things when tidings arrived of the great battle fought at 
Blenheim on the 13th August, 1704. By the Whigs the 

20 news was hailed with transports of joy and pride. No 
fault, no cause of quarrel, could be remembered by them 
against the commander whose genius had, in one day, 
changed the face of Europe, saved the imperial throne, 
humbled the house of Bourbon, and secured the Act of 

25 Settlement against foreign hostility. The feeling of the 
Tories Avas very different. They could not indeed, without 
imprudence, openly express regret at an event so glorious 
to their country; but their congratulations were so cold and 
sullen as to give deep disgust to the victorious general and 

30 his friends. 

Godolphin was not a reading man. Whatever time he 
could spare from business he was in the habit of spending 
at Newmarket or at the card-table. But he was not abso- 
lutely indifferent to poetry; and he was too intelligent an 

35 observer not to perceive that literature was a formidable 



ON ADDISON. 45 

j engine of political warfare, and that tlie great Whig leaders 
;iad strengthened their party, and raised their character, by- 
extending a liberal and judicious patronage to good writers. 
He was mortified, and not without reason, by the exceeding 
;oadness of the poems which appeared in honor of the battle 5 
;3f Blenheim. One of these poems has been rescued from 
oblivion by the exquisite absurdity of three lines. 

' " Think of two thousand gentlemen at least, 

And each man mounted on his capering beast ; 

Into the Danube they were pushed by shoals." 10 

Where to procure better verses the treasurer did not know. 
He understood how to negotiate a loan, or remit a subsidy : 
he was also well versed in the history of running horses 
ind fighting cocks; but his acquaintance among the poets 
was very small. He consulted Halifax; but Halifax affected 15 
to decline the ofiice of adviser. He had, he said, done his 
best, when he had power, to encourage men whose abilities 
and acquirements might do honor to their country. Those 
times were over. Other maxims had prevailed. Merit was 
suffered to pine in obscurity, and the public money was 20 
squandered on the undeserving. "I do know," he added, 
•'a gentleman who would celebrate the battle in a manner 
worthy of the subject; but I will not name him." Godol- 
phin, who was expert at the soft answer which turneth away 
wrath, and who was under the necessity of paying court to 25 
the Whigs, gently replied that there was too much ground 
for Halifax's comjDlaints, but that what was amiss should 
in time be rectified, and that in the mean time the services 
of a man such as Halifax had described should be liberall}' 
rewarded. Halifax then mentioned Addison, but, mindful ro 
of the dignity as well as of the pecuniary interest of his 
friend, insisted that the minister should apply in the most 
courteous manner to Addison himself; and this Godolphin 
promised to do. 



46 macaulay's essay 

Addison then occupied a garret up three pair of stairs, 
over a small shop in the Hayniarket. In this liunible lodg- 
ing he was surprised, on the morning wliich followed the 
conversation between Godolphin and Halifax, by a visit 
5 from no less a person than the Right Honorable Henry 
Boyle, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and afterward 
Lord Carleton. This high-born minister had been sent by 
the Lord Treasurer as ambassador to the needy poet. Ad- 
dison readily undertook tlie proposed task, a task which, to 

10 so good a Whig, was probably a pleasure. When the poem 
was little more than half finished, he showed it to Godol- 
phin, who was delighted with it, and particularly with the 
famous similitude of the Angel. -^ Addison was instantly 
appointed to a commissionership worth about two hundred 

15 pounds a year, and was assured that this appointment was 
only an earnest of greater favors. 

The Campaign came forth, and was as much admired 
by the public as by the minister. It pleases us less, on 
the whole, than the Epistle to Halifax. Yet it undoubt- 

20 edly ranks high among the poems which appeared during 
the interval between the death of Dryden and the dawn of 
Pope's genius. The chief merit of The Campaign, we think, 
is that which was noticed by Johnson, the manly and ra- 
tional rejection of fiction. The first great poet whose works 

25 have come down to us sung of war long before war became 
a science or a trade. If, in his time, there was enmity 
between two little Greek towns, each poured forth its crowd 
of citizens, ignorant of discipline, and armed with imple- 
ments of labor rudely turned into weapons. On each side 

30 appeared conspicuous a few chiefs whose wealth had enabled 
them to procure good armor, horses, and chariots, and whose 
leisure had enabled them to practise military exercises. 
One such chief, if he were a man of great strength, agility, 
and courage, would probably be more formidable than 

35 twenty common men; and the force and dexterity with 



ON ADDISON. 47 

■ wliicli he flung his spear might have no inconsiderable share 
in deciding the event of the day. Such were probably the 
jbattles with which Homer was familiar. But Homer re- 
llated the actions of men of a former generation, of men 
'who sprung from the gods, and communed with the gods 5 
Iface to face, of men one of whom could with ease hurl rocks 
which two sturdy hinds of a later period would be unable 
jeven to lift. He therefore naturally represented their 
'martial exploits as resembling in kind, but far surpassing 
I in magnitude, those of the stoutest and most expert com- 10 
batants of his own age. Achilles, clad in celestial armor, 
drawn by celestial coursers, grasping the spear which none 
but himself could raise, driving all Troy and Lycia before 
him, and choking Scamander with dead, was only a mag- 
nificent exaggeration of the real hero, who, strong, fearless, 15 
accustomed to tlie use of weapons, guarded by a shield and 
helmet of the best Sidonian fabric, and whirled along by 
horses of Thessaliau breed, struck down with his own right 
arm foe after foe. In all rude societies similar notions are 
found. There are at this day countries where the Life- 20 
guardsman Shaw ^ would be considered as a much greater 
warrior than the Duke of Wellington. Bonaparte loved to 
describe the astonishment with which the Mamelukes looked 
at his diminutive figure. Mourad Bey, distinguished above 
all his fellows by his bodily strength, and by the skill with 25 
which he managed his horse and his saber, could not believe 
that a man who was scarcely five feet high, and rode like a 
butcher, could be the greatest soldier in Europe. 

Homer's descriptions of war had therefore as much truth 
as poetry requires. But truth was altogether wanting to 30 
the performances of those who, writing about battles which 
had scarcely anything in common with the battles of his 
times, servilely imitated his manner. The folly of Silius 
Italicus, in particular, is positively nauseous. He under- 
took to record in verse the vicissitudes of a great struggle 35 



48 macaulay's essay y 

between generals of tlie first order; and his narrative is 
made up of the hideous wounds which these generals in- 
flicted with their own hands. Asdrubal flings a spear which 
grazes the shoulder of the consul Nero; but Nero sends his 

5 spear into Asdrubal's side. Fabius slays Tliuris and Butes 
and Maris and Arses, and the long-haired Adherbes, and 
the gigantic Thylis, and Sapharus and Monaesus, and the 
trumpeter Morinus. Hannibal runs Perusinus through the 
groin with a stake, and breaks the backbone of Telesinus 

10 with a huge stone. This detestable fashion was copied in 
modern times, and contiimed to prevail down to the age of 
Addison. Several versifiers had described William turning 
thousands to flight by his single prowess, and dyeing the 
Boyne with Irish blood. Nay, so estimable a writer as 

15 John Philips, the author of The Splendid Shilling, repre- 
sented Marlborough as having won the battle of Blenheim 
merely by strength of muscle and skill in fence. The fol- 
lowing lines may serve as an example : — 

" Churchill, viewing where 

20 The violence of Tallard most prevail'd, 

Came to oppose his slaughtering arm. AVitli speed 
Precipitate he rode, urging his way 
O'er hills of gasping heroes, and fallen steeds 
Rolling in death. Destruction, grim with blood, 

25 Attends his furious course. Around his head 

The glowing balls play innocent, while he 
With dire impetuous sway deals fatal blows 
Among the flying Gauls. Tn Gallic blood 
He dyes his reeking sword, and strews the ground 

30 With headless ranks. What can they do ? Or how 

Withstand his wide-destroying sword ? " 

Addison, with excellent sense and taste, departed from 

this ridiculous fashion. He reserved his praise for the 

qualities which made Marlborough truly great, energy, 

35 sagacity, military science. But, above all, the poet extolled 



ON ADDISON. 49 

the firmness of that mind which, in the midst of confusion, 
' uproar, and slaughter, examined and disposed everything 
with the serene wisdom of a higlier intelligence. 

Here it was that he introduced the famous comparison of 
Marlborough to an angel guiding the whirlwind. We will 5 
not dispute the general justice of Johnson's remarks on this . 
passage. But we must point out one circumstance which 
I appears to have escaped all the critics. The extraordinary 
effect which this simile produced when it first appeared, 
and which to the following generation seemed inexplicable, 10 
is doubtless to be chiefly attributed to a line which most 
readers now regard as a feeble parenthesis, 

" Such as, of late, o'er pale Britannia pass'd." 

Addison spoke, not of a storm, but of the storm. The 
great tempest of November, 1703, the only tempest which 15 
in our latitude has equalled the rage of a tropical hurricane, 
had left a dreadful recollection in the minds of all men. 
No other tempest was ever in this country the occasion of 
a parliamentary address or of a public fast. Whole fleets 
had been cast away. Large mansions had been blown doAvn. 20 

I One prelate had been buried beneath the ruins of his palace. 
London and Bristol had presented the appearance of cities 
just sacked. Hundreds of families were still in mourning. 
The prostrate trunks of large trees, and the ruins of houses, 
still attested, in all the Southern counties, the fury of the 25 
blast. The popularity which the simile ^ of the angel en- 

j joyed among Addison's contemporaries has always seemed 
to us to be a remarkable instance of the advantage which, 
in rhetoric and poetry, the particular has over the general. 
Soon after The Campaign, was published Addison's Nar- so 

I rative of his Travels in Italy. The first effect produced by 
this Narrative was disappointment. The crowd of readers 
who expected politics and scandal, speculations on the proj- 
ects of Victor Amadeus, and anecdotes about the jollities 



X 



50 macaulay's ersay ' 

of convents and the amours of cardinals and nuns, were 
confounded by finding that the writer's mind was much ) 
more occupied by the war between the Trojans and Eutul- ) 
ians than by the war between France and Austria; and that 

5 he seemed to have heard no scandal of later date than the . 
gallantries of the Empress Faustina. In time, however, 
the judgment of the many was overruled by that of the few; 
and, before the book was reprinted, it was so eagerly sought i 
that it sold for five times the original price. It is still read i 

10 with pleasure: the style is pure and flowing; the classical 
quotations and allusions are numerous and happy ; and we 
are now and then charmed by that singularly humane and : 
delicate humor in which Addison excelled all men. Yet o 
this agreeable work, even when considered merely as the 

15 history of a literary tour, may justly be censured on account 
of its faults of omission. We have already said that, 
though rich in extracts from the Latin poets, it contains 
scarcely any references to the Latin orators and historians. 
We must add that it contains little or rather no information 

20 respecting the history and literature of modern Italy. To 
the best of our remembrance, Addison does not mention 
Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Boiardo, Berni, Lorenzo de 
Medici, or Machiavelli. He coldly tells us that at Ferrara 
he saw the tomb of Ariosto, and that at Venice he heard the 

25 gondoliers sing verses of Tasso. But for Tasso and Ariosto 
he cared far less than for Valerius Flaccus and Sidonius 
Apollinaris. The gentle flow of the Ticin brings a line of 
Silius to his mind. The sulphurous stream of Albula sug- 
gests to him several passages of Martial. But he has not 

30 a word to say of the illustrious dead of Santa Croce; he 
crosses the wood of Ravenna without recollecting the 
Spectre Huntsman, and wanders up and down Eimini with- > 
out one thought of Francesca. At Paris he had eagerly 1 
sought an introduction to Boileau; but he seems not to have |; 

35 been at all aware that at Florence he was in the vicinity of ^ 



ON ADDISON. 51 

a poet with whom Boileau could not sustain a comparison, 
of the greatest lyric poet of modern times, Vincenzio Fili- 
caja. This is the more remarkable, because Filicaja was 
the favorite poet of the accomplished Somers, under whose 
protection Addison traveled, and to whom the account of 5 
the Travels is dedicated.^ The truth is, that Addison 
knew little, and cared less, about the literature of modern 
/ Italy. His favorite models were Latin. His favorite 
critics were French. Half the Tuscan poetry that he had 
read seemed to him monstrous, and the other half tawdry, lo 

His Travels were followed by the lively opera of Rosa- 
mond. This piece was ill set to music, and therefore failed - 
on the stage, but it completely succeeded in print, and is 
: indeed excellent in its kind. The smoothness with which 
the verses glide, and the elasticity with which they bound, 15 
is, to our ears at least, very pleasing. We are inclined to 
think that if Addison had left heroic couplets to Pope, and 
blank verse to Rowe, and had employed himself in writing 
airy and spirited songs, his reputation as a poet would have 
stood far higher than it now does. Some years after his 20 
death, Rosamond was set to new music by Doctor Arne, and 
fwas performed with complete success. Several passages 
long retained their popularity, and were daily sung, during 
the latter part of George the Second's reign, at all the harp- 
I sichords in England. 25 

I While Addison thus amused himself, his prospects, and 
the prospects of his party, were constantly becoming 
ibrighter and brighter. In the spring of 1705, the ministers 
were freed from the restraint imposed by a House of Com- 
mons in which Tories of the most perverse class had the 30 
ascendancy. The elections were favorable to the Whigs. 
I The coalition which had been tacitly and gradually formed 
r was now openly avowed. The Great Seal was given to 
^,Cowper. Somers and Halifax were, sworn of the council. 
Halifax was sent in the following year to carry the decora- 35 



52 macaulay's essay 

tions of tlie Order of the Garter to the Electoral Prince of 
Hanover, and was accompanied on this honorable mission 
by Addison, wlio had just been made Under-secretary of 
Stats. The Secretary of State under whom Addison first 
5 served was Sir Charles Hedges, a Tory. But Hedges was 
soon dismissed to make room for the most vehement of 
Whigs, Charles, Earl of Sunderland. In every department 
of the State, indeed, the High Churchmen were compelled 
to give place to their opponents. At the close of 1707, 

10 the Tories who still remained in office strove to rally, 
with Harley at their head. But the attempt, though 
favored by the queen, who had always been a Tory at 
heart, and who had now quarreled with the Duchess of 
Marlborough, was unsuccessful. The time was not yet. 

15 The Captain General was at the height of popularity and 
glory. The Low Church party had a majority in Parlia- 
ment. The country squires and rectors, though occasion- 
ally uttering a savage growl, were for the most part in a 
state of torpor, which lasted till they were aroused into 

20 activity, and indeed into madness, by the prosecution of 
Sacheverell.^ Harley and his adherents were compelled to 
retire. The victory of the Whigs was complete. At the 
general election of 1708 their strength in the House of 
Commons became irresistible; and, before the end of that 

25 year, Somers was made Lord President of the Council, and 
Wharton Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. 

Addison sat for Malmsbury in the House of Commons 
which was elected in 1708. But the House of Commons 
was not the field for him. The bashfulness of his nature 

30 made his wit and eloquence useless in debate. He once 
rose, but covxld not overcome his diffidence, and ever after 
remained silent. Nobody can think it strange that a great / 
writer should fail as a speaker. But many, probably, will i" 
think it strange that Addison's failure as a speaker should i 

35 have had no unfavorable effect on his suncpss as a politi- Y 



ON ADDISON. 53 

ciau. In our time, a man of high rank and great fortune 
might, though speaking very little and very ill, hold a 
considerable post. But it would now be inconceivable that 
a mere adventurer, a man who, when out of office, must live 
by his pen, should in a iew years become successively 5 
Under-Secretary of State, Chief Secretary for Ireland, and 
Secretary of State, without some oratorical talent. Addi- 
son, without high birth, and with little property, rose to a 
post which dukes, the heads of the great houses of Talbot, 
Russell, and Bentinck have thought it an honor to fill, lo 
Without opening his lips in debate, he rose to a post the 
highest that Chatham or Fox ^ ever reached. And this he 
did before he had been nine years in Parliament. We must 
look for the explanation of this seeming miracle to the 
peculiar circumstances in which that generation was placed. 15 
During the interval which elapsed between the time when 
the censorship of the Press ceased, and the time when par- 
liamentary proceedings began to be freely reported, literary 
talents were, to a public man, of much more importance, 
and oratorical talents of much less importance, than in our 20 
time. At present, the best way of giving rapid and wide 
publicity to a fact or an argument is to introduce that fact 
or argument into a speech made in Parliament. If a politi- 
cal tract were to appear superior to the Conduct of the 
Allies, ^ or to the best numbers of The Freeholder, the cir-25 
culation of such a tract would be languid indeed when com- 
pared with the circulation of every remarkable word uttered 
in the deliberations of the legislature. A speech made in 
the House of Commons at four in the morning is on thirty 
thousand tables before ten. A speech made on the Monday 30 
is read on the Wednesday by multitudes in Antrim and 
Aberdeenshire. The orator, by the help of the shorthand 
writer, has to a great extent superseded the pamphleteer. 
It was not so in the reign of Anne. The best speech could 
then produce no effect except on those who heard it. It 35 



54 macaulay's essay 

was only by means of the Press that the opinion of the pub- 
lic without doors could be influenced; and the opinion of 
the public withovit doors could not but be of the highest im- 
portance in a country governed by parliaments, and indeed 

5 at that time governed b}' triennial parliaments. The pen 
was, therefore, a more formidable political engine than the 
tongue. Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox contended only in Parlia- 
ment. But Walpole and Pulteney, the Pitt and Fox of an 
earlier period, had not done half of what was necessary 

10 when they sat down amidst the acclamations of the House 
of Commons. They had still to plead their cause before 
the country, and this they could do only by means of the 
Press. Their works are now forgotten. But it is certain 
that there were in Grub Street few more assiduous scrib- 

15 biers of Thoughts, Letters, Answers, Remarks, than these 
two great chiefs of parties. Pulteney, when leader of the 
opposition, and possessed of thirty thousand a year, edited 
The Craftsman. Walpole, though not a man of literary 
habits, was the author of at least ten pamphlets, and re- 

20 touched and corrected many more. These facts sufficiently 
show of how great importance literary assistance then was 
to tlie contending parties. St. John was, certainly, in 
Anne's reign, the best Tory speaker; Cowper was probably 
the best Wliig speal?;er. But it may well be doubted 

25 whether St. John did so much for the Tories as Swift, and 
whether Cowper ^ did so much for the Whigs as Addison. 
When these things are duly considered, it will not be 
thought strange that Addison should have climbed higher 
in the State than any other Englishman has ever, by means 

30 merely of literary talents, been able to climb. Swift would, 
in all probability, have climbed as high, if he had not been 
encumbered by his cassock and his pudding sleeves. As 
far as the homage of the great went. Swift had as much of 
it as if he had been Lord Trpasi;rer. 

35 To the influence wliich Addison derived from liis literary 



ON ADDISON. 55 

talents was added all tlie influence which arises from char- 
acter. The world, always ready to think the worst of needy 
political adventurers, was forced to make one exception. 
Restlessness, violence, audacity, laxity of principle, are the 
vices ordinarily attributed to that class of men. But fac- 5 
tion itself could not deny that Addison had, through all 
changes of fortune, been strictly faithful to his early opin- 
ions and to his early friends ; that his integrity was without 
stain ; that his whole deportment indicated a fine sense of 
the becoming; that, in the utmost heat of controversy, hisio 
zeal was tempered by a regard for truth, humanity, and 
social decorum; that no outrage could ever provoke him 
to retaliation unworthy of a Christian and a gentleman; 
and that his only faults were a too sensitive delicacy, and 
a modesty which amounted to bashfulness. 15 

He was undoubtedly one of the most popular men of his 
time ; and much of liis popularity he owed, we believe, to 
that very timidity which his friends lamented. That 
timidity often prevented him from exhibiting his talents 
to the best advantage. But it propitiated Nemesis. It 20 
averted that envy which would otherwise have been excited 
by fame so splendid, and by so rapid an elevation. No 
man is so great a favorite with the public as he who is at 
once an object of admiration, of respect, and of pity; and 
such were the feelings which Addison inspired. Those who 25 
enjoyed the privilege of hearing his familiar conversation 
declared with one voice that it was superior even to his 
writings. The brilliant Mary Montague^ said that she had 
known all the wits, and that Addison was the best company 
in the world. The malignant Pope ^ was forced to own that 30 
there was a charm in Addison's talk which could be found 
nowhere else. Swift, when burning with animosity against 
the Whigs, could not but confess to Stella that, after all, 
he had never known any associate so agreeable as Addison. 
Steele, an excellent judge of lively conversation, said that 35 



56 macaulay's essay 

the conversation of Addison was at once the most polite 
and the most mirthful that could be imagined; that it was 
Terence and Catullus in one, heightened by an exquisite 
something which was neither Terence nor Catullus, but 
5 Addison alone. Young, an excellent judge of serious con- 
versation, said that when Addison was at his ease, he went 
on in a noble strain of thought and language, so as to chain 
the attention of every hearer. Nor were Addison's great 
colloquial powers more admirable than the courtesy and 

10 softness of heart which appeared in his conversation. At 
the same time, it would be too much to say that he was 
wholly devoid of the malice which is, perhaps, inseparable 
from a keen sense of the ludicrous. He had one habit which 
both Swift and Stella applauded, and which we hardly know 

15 how to blame. If his first attempts to set a presuming 
dunce right were ill received, he changed his tone, "as- 
sented with civil leer," and lured the flattered coxcomb 
deeper and deeper into absurdity. That such was his prac- 
tice we should, we think, have guessed from liis Avorks. 

20 The Tatler's criticisms on Mr. Softly 's sonnet, and Tlie 
Spectator's dialogue with the politician who is so zealous 
for the honor of Lady Q — p — t — s, are excellent speci- 
mens of this innocent mischief. 

Such were Addison's talents for conversation. But his 

25 rare gifts were not exhibited to crowds or to strangers. 
As soon as he entered a large company, as soon as he saw 
an unknown face, his lips were sealed, and his manners be- 
came constrained. None who met him only in great assem- 
1)1 ies would have been able to believe that he was the same 

30 man who had often kept a few friends listening and laugh- 
ing round a table, from the time when the play ended till the 
clock of St. Paul's in Covent Garden struck four. Yet, even 
at such a table, he was not seen to the best advantage. To 
enjoy his conversation in the highest perfection, it was 

35 necessary to be alone with him, and to hear him, in his own 



ON ADDISON. 57 

phi-ase, think aloud. "There is no such thing," he used to 
say, "as real conversation, but between two persons." 

This timidity, a timidity neither ungraceful nor unami- 
able, led Addison into the two most serious faults which 
can with justice be imputed to him. He found that wine 5 
broke the spell which lay on his fine intellect, and was 
therefore too easily seduced into convivial excess. Such 
excess was in that age regarded, even by grave men, as the 
most venial of all peccadillos, and was so far from being 
a mark of ill-breeding that it was almost essential to the 10 
character of a fine gentleman. But the smallest speck is 
seen on a white ground; and almost all the biographers of 
Addison have said something about this failing. Of any 
other statesman or writer of Queen Anne's reign, we should 
no more think of saying that he sometimes took too much 15 
wine than that he wore a long wig and a sword. 

To the excessive modesty of Addison's nature we must 
ascribe another fault which generally arises from a very 
different cause. He became a little too fond of seeing him- 
self surrounded by a small circle of admirers, to whom he 20 
was as a king, or rather as a god. All these men were far 
inferior to him in ability, and some of them had very serious 
faults. Nor did those faults escape his observation ; for, if 
ever there was an eye which saw through and through men, 
it was the eye of Addison. But, with the keenest observa- 25 
tion, and the finest sense of the ridiculous, he had a large 
charity. The feeling with which he looked on most of his 
humble companions was one of benevolence, slightly tinc- 
tured with contempt. He was at perfect ease in their com- 
pany; he was grateful for their devoted attachment; and 30 
he loaded them with benefits. Their veneration for him 
appears to have exceeded that with which Johnson was 
regarded by Boswell, or Warburton by Hurd. It was not 
in the power of adulation to turn such a head, or deprave 
such a heart, as Addison's. But it must in candor be 35 



58 macaulay's essay 

admitted that he contracted some of the faults which can 
scarcely be avoided by any person who is so unfortunate as 
to be the oracle of a small literary coterie. 

One member of this little society was Eustace Budgell, 
5 a young Templar of some literature, and a distant relation 
of Addison.* There was at this time no stain on the char- 
acter of Budgell, and it is not improbable that his career 
would have been prosperous and honorable, if the life of 
his cousin had been prolonged. But when the master was 

10 laid in the grave, the disciple broke loose from all restraint, 
descended rapidly from one degree of vice and misery to 
another, ruined his fortune by follies, attempted to repair 
it by crimes, and at length closed a wicked and unhappy 
life by self-murder. Yet, to the last, the wretched man, 

15 gambler, lampooner, cheat, forger, as he was, retained his 
affection and veneration for Addison, and recorded those 
feelings in the last lines which he traced before he hid him- 
self from infamy under London Bridge. 

Another of Addison's favorite companions was Ambrose 

20 Philips, a good Whig and a middling poet, who had the 
honor of bringing into fashion a species of composition 
which has been called, after his name, Nam by Pamby. 
But the most remarkable members of the little senate, as 
Pope long afterward called it, were Richard Steele and 

25 Thomas Tickell.^ 

Steele had known Addison from childhood. They had 
been together at the Charter House and at Oxford; but cir- 
cumstances had then, for a time, separated them widely. 
Steele had left college without taking a degree, had been 

30 disinherited by a rich relation, had led a vagrant life, had 
served in the army, had tried to find the philosopher's stone, 
and had written a religious treatise and several comedies. 
He was one of those people whom it is impossible either to 
hate or to respect. His temper was sweet, his affections 

35 warm, his spirits lively, liis passions strong, and his prin- 



ON ADDISON. 59 

ciples weak. His life was spent in sinning and repenting; 
in inculcating what was right, and doing what was wrong. 
In speculation, he was a man of piety and honor; in prac- 
tice, he was much of the rake and a little of the swindler, 
lie was, however, so good-natured that it was not easy to 5 
be seriously angry with him, and that even rigid moralists 
felt more inclined to pity than to blame him, when he diced 
himself into a spunging house or drank himself into a fever. 
Addison regarded Steele with kindness not unmingled with 
scorn, tried, with little success, to keep him out of scrapes, lo 
introduced him to the great, procured a good place for him, 
corrected his plays, and, though by no means rich, lent him 
large sums of money. One of these loans appears, from a 
letter dated in August, 1TU8, to have amounted to a thou- 
sand pounds. These pecuniary transactions probably led 15 
to frequent bickerings. It is said that, on one occasion, 
Steele's negligence, or dishonesty, provoked Addison to 
repay himself by the help of a bailiff. We cannot join 
with Miss Aikin in rejecting this story. Johnson heard it 
from Savage, who heard it from Steele. Few private trans- 20 
actions which took place a hundred and twenty years ago 
are proved by stronger evidence than this. But we can by 
no means agree with those who condemn Addison's severity. 
The most amiable of mankind may well be moved to indig- 
nation, when what he has earned hardly, and lent with great 25 
inconvenience to himself, for the purpose of relieving a 
friend in distress, is squandered with insane profusion. 
We will illustrate our meaning by an example, which is 
not the less striking because it is taken from fiction. Dr. 
Harrison, in Fielding's Amelia, is represented as tlie most 30 
benevolent of human beings; yet he takes in execution not 
only the goods but the person of his friend Booth. Dr. 
Harrison resorts to this strong measure because he has been 
informed that Booth, while pleading poverty as an excuse 
for not paying just debts, has been buying fine jewelry 35 



60 macaulay's essay 

and setting up a coach. No person who is well acquainted 
with Steele's life and correspondence can doubt that he 
behaved quite as ill to Addison as Booth was accused of 
behaving to Dr. Harrison. The real history, we have little 

r> doubt, was something like this : A letter comes to Addison, 
im})loring help in pathetic terms, and promising reforma- 
tion and speedy repayment. Poor Dick declares that he 
has not an inch of candle, or a bushel of coals, or credit 
with the butcher for a shoulder of mutton. Addison is 

10 moved. He determines to deny himself some medals which 
are wanting to his series of the Twelve Caesars; to put off 
buying the new edition of Bayle's Dictionary; and to wear 
his old sword and buckles another year. In this way he 
manages to send a hundred pounds to his friend. The next 

15 day he calls on Steele, and finds scores of gentlemen and 
ladies assembled. The fiddles are playing. The table is 
groaning under champagne, burgundy, and pyramids of 

, sweetmeats. Is it strange that a man whose kindness is 
tluis abused should send sheriff's officers to reclaim what 

20 is due to him? 

Tickell was a young man, fresh from Oxford, who had 
introduced himself to public notice by writing a most in- 
genious and graceful little poem in praise of the opera of 
Rosamond. He deserved, and at length attained, the first 

25 place in Addison's friendship. For a time Steele and 
Tickell were on good terms. But they loved Addison too 
much to love each other, and at length became as bitter 
enemies as the rival bulls in Virgil.-^ 

At the close of 1708, Wharton became Lord Lieutenant of 

30 Ireland, and appointed Addison Chief Secretary. Addison 
was consequently under the necessity of qiiitting London 
for Dublin. Besides the chief secretaryship, which was 
then worth about two thousand pounds a year, he obtained 
a patent appointing liim keeper of the Irish Records for 

35 life, with a salary of three or four hundred a year. 



ON ADDISON. 61 

Budgell accompanied his cousin in the capacity of private 
secretary. 

Wharton and Addison had nothing in common but Whig- 
gism. The Lord Lieutenant was not only licentious and 
corrupt, but was distinguished from other libertines and 5 
jobbers by a callous impudence which presented the strong- 
est contrast to the Secretary's gentleness and' delicacy. 
Many parts of the Irish administration at this time appear 
to have deserved serious bhime. But against Addison there 
was not a murmur. He long afterward asserted, what all lo 
the evidence which we have ever seen tends to prove, that 
his diligence and integrity gained the friendship of all the 
most considerable persons in Ireland. 

The parliamentary career of Addison in Ireland has, we 
think, wholly escaped the notice of all his biographers. He 15 
was elected member for the borough of Cavan in the summer 
of 1709; and in the journals of two sessions his name fre- 
quently occurs. Some of the entries appear to indicate that 
he so far overcame his timidity as to make speeches. Nor 
is this by any means improbable ; for the Irish House of 20 
Commons was a far less formidable audience than the Eng- 
lish House ; and many tongues which were tied by fear in 
the greater assembly became fluent in the smaller. Gerard 
Hamilton, for example, who, from fear of losing the fame 
gained by his single speech, sat mute at Westminster dur- 25 
ing forty years, spoke with great effect at Dublin when he 
was secretary to Lord Halifax. 

While Addison was in Ireland, an event occurred to 
which he owes his high and permanent rank among British 
writers. As yet his fame rested on the performances which, 30 
tliough highly respectable, were not built for duration, and 
which would, if he had produced nothing else, have now 
been almost forgotten, on some excellent Latin verses, on 
some English verses, which occasionally rose above medi- 
ocrity, and on a book of travels, agreeably written, but not 35 



62 macaulay's essay 

indicating any extraordinary powers of mind. These works 
showed him to be a man of taste, sense, and learning. The 
time had come when he was to prove himself a man of 
genius, and to enrich our literature with compositions which 
5 will live as long as the English language. 

In the spring of 1709, Steele formed a literary project, of 
which he was far indeed from foreseeing the consequences. 
Periodical papers had during many years been published 
in London. Most of these were political; but in some of 

10 them questions of morality, taste, and love casuistry had 
been discussed. The literary merit of these works was 
small indeed; and even their names are now known only to 
the curious. 

Steele had been appointed gazetteer by Sunderland, at 

15 the request, it is said, of Addison, and thus had access to 
foreign intelligence earlier and more authentic than was in 
those times within the reach of an ordinary news-writer. 
This circumstance seems to have suggested to him the 
scheme of publishing a periodical paper on a new plan. 

20 It was to appear on the days on whicli tlie post left London 
for the country, which were, in that generation, the Tues- 
days, Thursdays, and Saturdays. It was to contain the 
foreign news, accounts of theatrical representations, and 
the literary. gossip of Will's and of the Grecian.^ It was 

25 also to contain remarks on the fashionable topics of the 
day, compliments to beauties, pasquinades on noted sharp- 
ers, and criticisms on popular preachers. The aim of Steele 
does not appear to have been at first higher than this. He 
was not ill qualified to conduct the work which he had 

;50 planned. His })ublic intelligence he drew from the best 
sources. He knew the town, and had paid dear for his 
knowledge. He had read much more tlian the dissipated 
men of that time were in the habit of reading. He was a 
rake among scliolars, and a scholar among rakes. His 

o5 style was easy and not incorrect, and, though his wit and 



ON ADDISON. 63 

humor were of no high order, liis gay aninuil spirits im- 
parted to his compositions an air of vivacity which ordinary 
readers could liardly distinguish from comic genius. His 
writings have been well compared to those light wines 
which, though deficient in body and flavor, are yet a 5 
pleasant small drink, if not kept too long or carried too 
far. 

Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, Astrologer, was an imaginary 
person, almost as well known in that age as Mr. Paul I'ry 
or Mr. Samuel Pickwick in ours. Swift had assumed the lo 
name of Bickerstaff in a satirical pamphlet against Part- 
ridge, the maker of almanacs. Partridge had been fool 
enough to publish a furious reply. Bickerstaff had rejoined 
in a second pamphlet still more diverting than the first. 
All the wits had combined to keep up the joke, and the 15 
town was long in convulsions of laughter. Steele deter- 
mined to employ the name which this controversy had made 
popular; and, in April, 1709, it was announced that Isaac 
Bickerstaff, Esquire, Astrologer, was about to publish a 
paper called The Tatler. 20 

Addison had not been consulted about this scheme; but 
as soon as he heard of it, he determined to give his assist- 
ance. The effect of that assistance cannot be better de- 
scribed than in Steele's own words. "I fared," he said, 
"like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful neighbor 25 
to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary. When I had 
once called him in, I could not subsist without dependence 
on him." "The i:)aper," he says elsewhere, " was advanced 
indeed. It was raised to a greater thing than I intended it." 

It is probable that Addison, when he sent across St. 30 
George's Channel his first contributions to The Tatler,^ had 
no notion of the extent and variety of his own powers. He 
was the possessor of a vast mine, rich with a hundred ores. 
But he had been acquainted only with the least ]n'ecious 
part of his treasures, and had hitherto contented himself 35 



64 macaulay's essay 

with producing sometimes copper and sometimes lead, in- 
termingled with a little silver. All at once, and 'by mere 
accident, he had lighted on an inexhaustible vein of the 
finest gold. 
5 The mere choice and arrangement of his words would 
have sufficed to make his essays classical. For never, not 
even by Dryden, not even by Temple, had the English lan- 
guage been written with such sweetness, grace, and facility. 
But this was the smallest part of Addison's praise. Had 

10 he clothed his thoughts in the half French style of Horace 
Walpole, or in the half Latin style of Doctor Johnson, or in 
the half German jargon of the present day, his genius would 
have triumphed over all faults of manner. 

As a moral satirist he stands unrivaled. If ever the 

15 best Tatlers and Spectators were equaled in their own 
kind, we should be inclined to guess that it must have been 
by the lost comedies of Menander. 

In wit, properly so called, Addison was not inferior to 
Cowley or Butler. No single ode of Cowley contains so' 

20 many happy analogies as are crowded into tlie lines to Sir ' 
Godfrey Kneller; and we would undertake to collect from 
the Spectators as great a number of ingenious illustration!, 
as can be found in Hudibras. The still higher faculty of 
invention Addison possessed in still larger measure. The 

25 numerous fictions, generally original, often wild and gro- 
tesque, but always singularly graceful and happy, which 
are found in his essays, fully entitle him to the rank of a 
great poet, a rank to which his metrical compositions give 
him no claim. As an observer of life, of manners, of all 

.30 the shades of human character, he stands in the first class. 
And what he observed he had the art of communicating in 
two widely different ways. He could describe virtues, 
vices, habits, whims, as well as Clarendon. But he could 
do something better. He could call luiman beings into 

35 existence, and make them exhibit themselves. If we wish 



ON ADDISON. 65 

to find anything more vivid than Addison's best portraits, 
we must go either to Shakespeare or to Cervantes.^ 

But what shall we say of Addison's humor, of his sense 
of the ludicrous, of his power of awakening that sense in 
others, and .of drawing mirth from incidents which occur 5 
every day, and from little peculiarities of temper and 
manner, such as may be found in every man? We feel the 
charm ; we give ourselves up to it ; but we strive in vain to 
analyze it. 

Perhaps the best way of describing Addison's peculiar 10 
pleasantry is to compare it with the pleasantry of some 
other great satirists. The three most eminent masters of 
the art of ridicule, during the eighteenth century, were, we 
conceive, Addison, Swift, and Voltaire. Which of the 
three had the greatest power of moving laughter may be 15 
questioned. But each of them, within his own domain, was 
supreme. 

Voltaire is the prince of buffoons. His merriment is 
.vitliout disguise or restraint. He gambols; he grins; he 
shakes his sides; he points the finger; he turns up the 20 
uose; he shoots out the tongue. The manner of Swift is 
llae very opposite to this. He moves laughter, but never 
joins in it. He appears in his works such as he appeared 
in society. All the company are convulsed with merriment, 
while the dean, the author of all the mirth, preserves an 25 
invincible gravity, and even sourness of aspect, and gives 
utterance to the most eccentric and ludicrous fancies, with 
the air of a man reading the commination service. 

The manner of Addison is as remote from that of Swift 
as from that of Voltaire. He neither laughs out like ^o 
the French wit, nor, like the Irish wit, throws a double por- 
tion of severity into his countenance while laughing in- 
wardly ; but preserves a look peculiarly his own, a look of 
demure serenity, disturbed only by an arch sparkle of tlie 
eye, an almost imperceptible elevation of the brow, an 35 



66 macaulay's essay 

almost imperceptible curl of the lip. His tone is never, 
tliat either of a Jack Pudding or of a Cynic. It is that ofi, 
a gentleman, in whom the quickest sense of the ridiculous 
is constantly tempered by good nature and good breeding. 

5 We own that the humor of Addison is, in our opinion, 
of a more delicious flavor than tlie humor of either Swift 
or Voltaire.^ Thus much, at least, is certain, that both 
Swift and Voltaire have been successfully mimicked, and 
that no man has yet been able to mimic Addison. Tliei 

10 letter of the Abbe Coyer to Pansophe is Voltaire all over, 
and imposed, during a long time, on the Academicians of 
Paris. There are passages in Arbuthnot's satirical works^ 
which we, at least, cannot distinguish from Swift's best) 
writing. But of the many eminent men who have made* 

15 Addison their model, though several have copied his mere" 
diction with happy effect, none has been able to catch the/ 
tone of his pleasantry. In The World, in The Connoisseur, 
in The Mirror, in The Lounger, there are numerous papers 
written in obvious imitation of his Tatlers and Spectators. 

20 Most of those papers have some merit; many are very lively 
and amusing; but there is not a single one which could be 
passed off as Addison's on a critic of the smallest perspi- 
cacity. I 
But thatAvhich chiefly distinguishes Addison from Swift,'i 

25 from Voltaire, from almost all the other great masters of 
ridicule, is the grace, the nobleness, tlie moral purity, 
which we find even in his merriment. Severity, gradually 
hardening and darkening into misanthropy, characterizes 
the works of Swift. The nature of Voltaire was, indeed, 

30 not inhuman; but he venerated nothing. Neither in the^ 
masterpieces of art nor in the purest examples of virtue, 
neither in the Great First Cause nor in the awful enigma 
of the grave, could he see an^^thing but subjects for droll-' 
ery. The more solemn and august the theme, the more 

33 monkey-like was liis grimacing and chattering. The mirtli 



ON ADDISON. 67 

•of Swift is the mirth of Mephistopheles ; the mirth of 
Voltaire is the mirth of Puck. If, as Soame Jenyns oddly 
imagined, a portion of the happiness of seraphim and just 
men made perfect be derived from an exquisite perception 
of the ludicrous, their mirth must surely be none other 5 
than the mirth of Addison : a mirth consistent with tender 
compassion for all that is frail, and with profound reverence 
for all that is sublime. jSTothing great, nothing amiable, no 
moral duty, no doctrine of natural or revealed religion, has 
<3ver been associated by Addison with any degrading idea. 10 
His humanity is without a parallel in literary history. The 
highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power with- 
out abusing it. No kind of power is more formidable than 
the power of making men ridiculous ; and that power Addi- 
son possessed in boundless measure. How grossly that 15 
power was abused by Swift and by Voltaire is well known. 
But of Addison it may be confidently affirmed that he has 
blackened no man's character, nay, that it would be diffi- 
cult, if not impossible, to find in all the volumes which he 
has left us a single taunt which can be called ungenerous or 20 
unkind. Yet he had detractors, whose malignity might 
have seemed to justify as terrible a revenge as that which 
men, not superior to him in genius, wreaked on Bettes- 
vvorth and on Franc de Pompignan. He was a politician; 
he was the best writer of his party; he lived in times of 25 
fierce excitement, in times when persons of high character 
and station stooped to scurrility such as is now i)racticed 
only by tlie basest of mankind. Yet no provocation and no 
example could induce him to return railing for railing. 
' Of the service which his essays rendered to morality it is ao 
difficult to speak too highly. It is true that, when The 
Tatler appeared, that age of outrageous profaneness and 
licentiousness which followed the Restoration had passed 
aAvay. Jeremy Collier had shamed the theaters into some- 
thing whicli, compared with tlie excesses of Etheroge and 35 



68 macaulay's essay 

Wycherley, might be called decency. Yet there still lin-c 
gered in the public mind a pernicious notion that thert^ 
was some connection between genius and profligacy, between^ 
the domestic virtues and the sullen formality of the Puri-) 

5 tans. That error it is the glory of Addison to have dis-^ 
pelled. He taught the nation that the faith and thai 
morality of Hale and Tillotson^ might be found in company j 
with wit more sparkling than the wit of Congreve, and, 
with humor richer than the humor of Vanbrugh. Sc» 

10 effectually, indeed, did he retort on vice the mockery which ■ 
had recently been directed against virtue, that, since his' 
time, the open violation of decency has always been con- 
sidered among us as the mark of a fool. And this revolu-, 
tion, the greatest and most salutary ever effected by anyj 

15 satirist, he accomplished, be it remembered, without writ-) 
ing one personal lampoon. 

In the early contributions of Addison to The Tatler his 
peculiar powers were not fully exhibited. Yet, from the 
first, his superiority to all his coadjutors was evident. 

20 Some of his later Tatlers are fully equal to anything that 
he ever wrote. Among the portraits, we most admire Tom 
Folio, Ned Softly, and the Political Upholsterer. Th 
Proceedings of the Court of Honor, the Thermometer o 
Zeal, the Story of the Frozen Words, the Memoirs of th 

25 Shilling, are excellent specimens of that ingenious and' 
lively species of fiction in which Addison excelled all men.j 
There is one still better paper, ^ of the same class; but! 
though that paper, a hundred and thirty-three years agoJ 
was probably thought as edifying as one of Smalridge'sj 

30 sermons, we dare not indicate it to the squeamish reader ji 
of the nineteenth century. I 

During the session of Parliament which commenced iij' 
November, 1709, and which the impeachment of Sacheverel! 
has made memorable, Addison appears to have resided in 

35 London. The Tatler was now more popular than any peri- 

I 



ON ADDISON. 69 

odical paper had ever been; and his couiiection with it was 
generally known. It was not known, however, that almost 
everything good in The Tatler was his. The truth is, that 
the fifty or sixty numbers which we owe to him were not 
merely the best, but so decidedly the best that any five of 5 
them are more valuable than all the two hundred numbers 
in which he had no share. 

He required, at this time, all the solace which he could 
derive from literary success. The queen had always dis- 
liked the Whigs. She had during some years disliked the 10 
JMarlborough family. But, reigning by a disputed title, 
she could not venture directly to oppose herself to a ma- 
jority of both Houses of Parliament; and, engaged as she 
was in a war on the event of which her own crown was 
staked, she could not venture to disgrace a great and sue- 15 
cessful general.^ But at length, in the year 1710, the causes 
which had restrained her from showing her aversion to the 
Low Church party ceased to operate. The trial of Sachev- 
erell produced an outbreak of public feeling scarcely less 
violent than the outbreaks which we can ourselves remem- 20 
ber in 1820 and in 1S31. The country gentlemen, the 
country clergymen, the rabble of the towns, were all, for 
once, on the same side.- It was clear that, if a general 
election took place before the excitement abated, the Tories 
would have a majority. The services of Marlborough had 25 
been so splendid that they wereno longer necessary. The 
queen's throne was secure from all attack on the part of 
Louis. Indeed, it seemed much more likely that the Eng- 
lish and German armies would divide the spoils of Versailles 
and Marli than that a marshal of France would bring back 30 
the Pretender 2 to St. James's. The queen, acting by the 
advice of Harley, determined to dismiss her servants. In 
June the change commenced. Sunderland was the first 
who fell. The Tories exulted over his fall. The Whigs 
tried, during a few weeks, to persuade themselves that her 35 



70 MACAULAV'S ESSAY 

majesty liacl acted only from personal dislike to the secre- 
tary, and that she meditated no further alteration. But, 
early in August, Godolphin was surprised by a letter from 
Anne, which directed him to break his white staff. Even 

5 after this event, the irresolution or dissimulation of llarley 
kept up tiie hopes of the Whigs during another month; and 
then the ruin became rapid and violent. The Parliament 
was dissolved. The ministers were turned out. The Tories 
were called to office. The tide of po^jularity ran violently 

10 in favor of the High Cliurcli party. That party, feeble in 
the late House of Commons, was now irresistible. The 
power which the Tories had thus suddenly acquired, they 
used with blind and stupid ferocity. The howl which the 
whole pack set up for prey and for blood appalled even him 

15 who had roused and unchained them. When, at this dis- 
tance of time, we calmly review the conduct of the discarded 
ministers, we cannot but feel a movement of indignation at 
the injustice with which they were treated. No body of 
men had ever administered tlie government with more 

20 energy, ability, and moderation; and their success had 
been proportioned to tlieir wisdom. They had saved Hol- 
land and Germany. Tliey had humbled France. They 
had, as it seamed, all but torn Spain from the house of 
Bourbon. They had made England the first power in 

25 Europe. At home they had united England and Scotland. 
Tliey had respected the rights of conscience and the liberty 
of the subject. They retired, leaving their country at the 
height of prosperity and glory. And yet they were pur- 
sued to their retreat by such a roar of obloquy as was never 

30 raised against the Government which threw away thirteen 
colonies, or against the Government Avhich sent a gallant 
army to perisli in the ditches of Walcheren. 

None of the Whigs suffered more in the general wreck 
than Addison. He had just sustained some heavy pecun- 

35 iary losses, of the nature of which we are imperfectly in- 



ON ADDISON. 71 

formed, when his secretaryship was taken from him. He 
had reason to believe tliat he should also be deprived of the 
small Irish office which he held by patent. He had just 
resigned his fellowship. It seems probable that he had 
already ventured to raise his eyes to a great lady, and that, 5 
while his political friends were in power, and while his 
own fortunes were rising, he had been, in the phrase of 
tlie romances which were then fashionable, permitted to 
hope. But Mr. Addison the ingenious writer and Mr. Ad- 
dison the chief secretary were, in her ladyship's opinion, lO 
two very different persons. All these calamities united, 
however, could not disturb the serene cheerfulness of a 
mind conscious of innocence, and rich in its own wealth. 
He told his friends, with smiling resignation, that they 
ought to admire his philosophy ; that he had lost at once 15 
las fortune, his place, his fellowship, and his mistress; 
that he must think of turning tutor again, and yet that his 
spirits were as good as ever. 

He had one consolation. Of the unpopularity which his 
friends had incurred, he had no share. Such was the esteem 20 
with which he was regarded, that, wliile the most violent 
measures were taken for the purpose of forcing Tory mem- 
bers on Whig corporations, he was returned to Parliament 
without even a contest. Swift, who was now in London, 
and who had already determined on quitting the Whigs, 25 
wrote to Stella ^ in these remarkable words : " The Tories 
carry it among the new members six to one. Mr. Addison's 
election has passed easy and undisputed; and I believe if 
he had a mind to be king, he would hardly be refused." 

The good-will with which the Tories regarded Addison 30 
is the more honorable to liim, because it had not been pur- 
chased by any concession on his part. During the general 
election he published a political journal, entitled The Whig 
Examiner. Of that journal it may bo suflfifient to say that 
Johnson, in spite of his strong political prejudices, pro- 35 



72 macaulay's essay 

nuuncecl it to be superior in wit to any of Swift's writings 
on the other side. When it ceased to appear, Swift, in a 
letter to Stella, expressed his exultation at the death of so 
formidable an antagonist. "He might well rejoice," says 
5, Johnson, "at the death of that which he could not have 
killed." "On no occasion," he adds, "was the genius of 
Addison more vigorously exerted, and on none did the 
superiority of his powers more evidently appear." 

The only use which Addison appears to have made of the 

10 favor with which he was regarded by the Tories was to 
save some of his friends from the general ruin of the Whig 
party. He felt himself to be in a situation which made it 
his duty to take a decided part in politics. But the case 
of Steele and of Ambrose Philips was different. For Phil- 

15 ips, Addison even condescended to solicit, with what success 
we have not ascertained. Steele held two places. He was 
gazetteer, and he was also a commissioner of stamps. The 
Gazette was taken from him. But he was suffered to retain 
his place in the Stamp Office, on an implied understanding 

20 that he should not be active against the new Government; 
and he was, during more than two years, induced by Addi- 
son to observe this armistice with tolerable fidelity. 

Isaac Bickerstaff accordingly became silent upon politics, 
and the article of news, which had once formed about one 

25 third of his paper, altogether disappeared. The Tatler had 
completely changed its character. It was now nothing but 
a series of essays on books, morals, and manners. Steele 
therefore resolved to bring it to a close, and to commence 
a new work on an improved plan. It was announced that 

.W this new work would be published daily. The undertaking 
was generally regarded as bold, or rather rash; but the 
event amply justified the confidence with which Steele re- 
lied on the fertility of Addison's genius. On the 2d of 
January, 1711, appeared the last Tatler. On the 1st of 

35 March following appeared the first of an incomparable 



ON ADDISON. 73 

series of papers, containing observations on life and litera- 
ture by an imaginary Spectator. 

The Spectator himself was conceived and drawn by Addi- 
son; and it is not easy to doubt that the portrait was meant 
to be in some features a likeness of the painter. The Spec- 5 
tator is a gentleman who, after passing a studious youth at 
tlie university, has traveled on classic ground, and has 
bestowed much attention on curious points of antiqu.ity. 
He has, on his return, fixed his residence in London, and has 
observed all the forms of life which are to be found in that lo 
great city, has daily listened to the wits of Will's, has 
smoked with the philosophers of the Grecian, and has 
mingled with the parsons at Child's, and with the politi- 
cians at the St. James's. In the morning, he often listens 
to the hum of the Exchange ; in the evening, his face is 15 
constantly to be seen in the pit of Drury Lane Theater. 
But an insurmountable bash fulness prevents him from open- 
ing his mouth, except in a small circle of intimate friends. 

These friends were first sketched by Steele. Four of the 
club, the templar, the clergyman, the soldier, and the mer- 20 
chant, were uninteresting figures, fit only for a background. 
But the other two, an old country baronet and an old town 
rake, though not delineated with a very delicate pencil, 
had some good strokes. Addison took the rude outlines 
into his own hands, retouched them, colored them, and is 25 
in truth the creator of the Sir Roger de Coverley and the 
Will Honeycomb with whom we are all familiar. 

The plan of The Spectator must be allowed to be both 
original and eminently happy. Every valuable essay in 
the series may be read with pleasure separately; yet the 30 
five or six hundred essays form a whole, and a whole which 
has the interest of a novel. It must be remembered, too, 
that at that time no novel giving a lively and powerful 
picture of the coinmon life and manners of England had ap- 
peared. Eichardson was working as a compositor. Field- 35 



74 macaulay's essay 

iiig was robbing birds' nests. ^ Smollett was not yet born.^ 
The narrative, therefore, which connects together the Spec- 
tator's essays gave to our ancestors their first taste of an 
exquisite and untried pleasure. That narrative was indeed 

5 constructed with no art or labor. The events were such 
events as occur every day. Sir Roger comes up to town to 
see Eugenio, as the worthy baronet always called Prince 
Eugene, goes with the Spectator on the water to Spring 
Gardens, walks among the tombs in the Abbey, and is 

10 frightened by the Mohawks, but conquers his apprehension 
so far as to go to the theater when the Distressed Mother 
is acted. The Spectator pays a visit in the summer to 
Coverley Hall, is charmed with the old house, the old 
butler, and the old chaplain, eats a jack caught by Will 

15 Wimble, rides to the assizes, and hears a point of law dis- 
cussed by Tom Touchy. At last a letter from the honest 
butler brings to the club the news that Sir Roger is dead. 
Will Honeycomb marries and reforms at sixty. The club 
breaks up; and the Spectator resigns his functions. Such 

20 events can hardly be said to form a plot ; yet they are re- 
lated with such truth, such grace, such wit, such humor, 
such pathos, such knowledge of the human heart, such 
knowledge of the ways of the world, that they charm us on 
the hundredth perusal. We have not the least doubt that 

25 if Addison had written a novel, on an extensive plan, it 
would have been superior to any that we possess. As it 
is, he is entitled to be considered not only as the greatest of 
the English essayists, but as the forerunner of the great 
English novelists. 

30 We say this of Addison alone; for Addison is the Spec- 
tator. About three sevenths of the work are his; and it is 
no exaggeration to say that his worst essay is as good as 
the best essay of any of his coadjutors. His best essays 
approach near to absolute perfection ; nor is their excellence 

35 more wonderful than their variety. His invention never 



ON ADDISON. 75 

seems to flag; nor is he ever under the necessity of repeat- 
ing himself, or of wearing out a subject. There are no 
dregs in his wine. He regales us after the fashion of that 
prodigal nabob who held that there was only one good glass 
in a bottle. As soon as we have tasted the first sparkling 5 
foam of a jest, it is withdrawn, and a fresh draught of nec- 
tar is at our lips. On the Monday we have an allegory as 
lively and ingenious as Lucian's Auction of Lives; on the 
Tuesday, an Eastern apologue as richly colored as the Tales 
of Scheherazade; on the Wednesday, a character described lO 
with the skill of La Bruyere; on the Thursday, a scene 
from common life equal to the best chapters in the Vicar of 
Wakefield ; on the Friday, some sly Horatian pleasantry on 
fashionable follies, on hoops, patches, or puppet shows; 
and on the Saturda}^, a religious meditation, which will 15 
bear a comparison with the finest passages in Mass i lion. 

It is dangerous to select where there is so much that de- 
serves the highest praise. We will venture, however, to 
say that any person who wishes to form a just notion of the 
extent and variety of Addison's powers will do well to read 20 
at one sitting the following papers : the two Visits to the 
Abbey, the Visit to the Exchange, the Journal of the Re- 
tired Citizen, the Vision of Mirza, the Transmigrations of 
Pug the Monkey, and the Death of Sir Roger de Coverley.^ 

The least valuable of Addison's contributions to The 25 
Spectator are, in the judgment of our age, his critical 
papers. Yet his critical papers are always luminous, and 
often ingenious. The very worst of them must be regarded 
as creditable to him, when the character of the school in 
which he has been trained is fairly considered. The best 30 
of them were much too good for his readers. In truth, he 
was not so far behind our generation as he was before his 
own. No essays in The Spectator were more censured and 
derided than those in which he raised his voice against the 
contempt with which our fine old ballads were regarded, and 35 



76 macaulat'r essay 

showed the scoffers that the same gold which, burnished 
and polished, gives luster to the ^neid and the Odes of 
Horace, is mingled with the rude dross of Chevy Chase. 
It is not strange that the success of The Spectator should 

5 have been such as no similar work has ever obtained. The 
number of copies daily distributed was at first three thou- 
sand. It subsequently increased, and had risen to near four 
thousand when the stamp tax was imposed. That tax was 
fatal to a crowd of journals. The Spectator, however, stood 

10 its ground, doubled its price, and, though its circulation 
fell off, still yielded a large revenue both to the State and 
to the authors. For particular papers the demand was 
immense;^ of some, it is said, twenty thousand copies were 
required. But this was not all. To have The Spectator 

15 served up every morning with the bohea and rolls was a 
luxury for the few. The majority were content to wait till 
essays enough had appeared to form a volume. Ten thou- 
sand copies of each volume were immediately taken off, and 
new editions were called for. It must be remembered that 

20 the population of England was then hardly a third of what 
it now is. The number of Englishmen who were in the 
habit of reading was probably not a sixth of what it now is. 
A shopkeeper or a farmer who found any pleasure in litera- 
ture was a rarity. Nay, there was doubtless more than one 

25 knight of the shire whose country-seat did not contain ten 
books, receipt-books and books on farriery included. In 
these circumstances, the sale of The Spectator must be con- 
sidered as indicating a popularity quite as great as that of 
the most successful works of Sir Walter Scott and Mr. 

;iO Dickens in our own time. 

At the close of 1712 The Spectator ceased to appear. It 
was probably felt that the short-faced gentleman and his 
club had been long enough before the town ; and that it 
was time to withdraw them, and to replace them by a new 

35 set of characters. In a few weeks the first number of The 



ON ADDISON. 77 

Guardian was published. But Tlie Guardian was unfortu- 
nate both in its birth and in its death. It began in duhiess, 
and disappeared in a tempest of faction. The original plan 
was bad. Addison contributed nothing till sixty-six num- 
bers had appeared; and it was then impossible to make 5 
The Guardian what The Spectator had been. Nestor Iron- 
side and the Miss Lizards were people to whom even he 
could impart no interest. He could only furnish some 
excellent little essays, both serious and comic ; and this he 
did. 10 

Why Addison gave no assistance to The Guardian during 
the first two months of its existence is a question which has 
puzzled the editors and biographers, but which seems to us 
to admit of a very easy solution. He was then engaged in 
bringing his Cato on the stage.' 15 

The first four acts of this drama had been lying in his 
desk since his return from Italy. His modest and sensitive 
nature shrank from the risk of a public and shameful fail- 
ure ; and, though all who saw the manuscript were loud in 
praise, some thought it possible that an audience might 20 
become impatient even of very good rhetoric, and advised 
Addison to print the play without hazarding a representa- 
tion. At length, after many fits of apprehension, the poet 
yielded to the urgency of his political friends, who hoped 
that the public would discover some analogy between the 25 
followers of Csesar and the Tories, between SSmpronius and 
the apostate Whigs, between Cato, struggling to the last for 
the liberties of Eome, and the band of patriots who still 
stood firm round Halifax and Wharton. 

Addison gave the play to the managers of Drury LaneoO 
Theater, without stipulating for any advantage to himself. 
They therefore thought themselves bound to spare no cost 
in scenery and dresses. The decorations, it is true, would 
not have pleased the skillful eye of Mr. Macready. Juba's 
waistcoat blazed with gold lace ; Marcia's hoop Avas worthy 35 



<b MACAULAY S ESSAY 

of a duchess on tlie birthday ; and Cato Avore a wig worth 
fifty guineas. The proh)gue was written by Pope, and is 
undoiibtedly a dignified and spirited composition. The part 
of the hero was excellently played by Booth. Steele under- 
5 took to pack a house. The boxes were in a blaze with the 
stars of the Peers in opposition. The pit was crow^ded with 
attentive and friendly listeners from the Inns of Court and 
the literary coffee-houses. Sir Gilbert Heathcote, Governor 
of the Bank of England, was at the head of a powerful body 

10 of auxiliaries from the City, warm men and true Whigs, but 
better known at Jonathan's and Garraway's than in the 
haunts of Avits and critics. 

These precautions were quite superfluous. The Tories, 
as a body, regarded Addison Avith no unkind feelings. Nor 

15 Avas it for their interest, — professing, as they did, profound 
reverence for laAV and prescription, and abhorrence both of 
popular insurrection and of 'standing armies, - — to appropri- 
ate to themselves reflections throAvn on the great military 
chief and demagogue, avIio, Avith the support of the legions 

20 and of the common people, subverted all the ancient insti- 
tutions of his country. Accordingly, every shout that Avas 
raised by the members of the Kit Cat Avas echoed by the 
High Churchmen of the October ; and the curtain at length 
fell amidst thunders of unanimous applause. 

25 The delight and admiration of the toAvn Avere described 
by The Guardian in terms which Ave might attribute to par- 
tiality, were it not that The Examiner, the organ of the 
ministry, held similar language. The Tories, indeed, found 
much to sneer at in the conduct of their opponents. Steele 

30 had on this, as on other occasions, shoAvn more zeal than 
taste or judgment. The honest citizens Avho marched under 
the orders of Sir Gibby, as he Avas facetiously called, prob- 
ably knew better Avhen to buy and Avhen to sell stock than 
when to clap and Avhen to hiss at a play, and incurred some 

35 ridicule by making the hypocritical Sempronius their favor- 



ON ADDISON. 79 

ite, and by giving to his insincere rants londer plaudits than 
they bestowed on the temperate eloquence of Cato. Whar- 
ton, too, who had the incredible effrontery to applaud the 
lines about flying from prosperous vice and from the power 
of impious men to a private station, did not escape the sar- 5 
casms of those who justly thought that he could fly from 
nothing more vicious or impious than himself. The epi- 
logue, which was written by Garth, a zealous Whig, was 
severely and not unreasonably censured as ignoble and out 
of place. But Addison was described, even by the bitterest 10 
Tory writers, as a gentleman of wit and virtue, in whose 
friendship many persons of both parties were happy, and 
whose name ought not to be mixed up with factious 
squabbles. 

Of the jests by which the triumph of the Whig party was 15 
disturbed, the most severe and happy was Bolingbroke's. 
Between two acts, he sent for Booth to his box, and pre- 
sented him, before the whole theater, with a purse of fifty 
guineas for defending the cause of liberty so well against 
a perpetual dictator. 20 

It was April; and in April, a hundred and thirty years 
ago, the London season was thought to be far advanced. 
During a whole month, however, Cato was performed to 
overflowing houses, and brought into the treasury of the 
theater twice the gains of an ordinary spring. In the sum- 25 
mer the Drury Lane company went down to the Act at 
Oxford, and there, before an audience which retained an af- . 
fectionate remembrance of Addison's accomplishments and 
virtues, his tragedy was acted during several days. The 
gownsmen began to besiege the theater in the forenoon, 30 
and by one in the afternoon all the seats were filled. 

About the merits of the piece which had so extraordinary 
an effect, the public, we suppose, has made up its mind. 
To compare it with the masterpieces of the Attic stage, with 
the great English dramas of the time of Elizabeth, or even 35 



80 macaulay's essay 

with the productions of Schiller's manhood, would be absurd 
indeed. Yet it contains excellent dialogue and declamation, 
and, among plays fashioned on the French model, must be 
allowed to rank high ; not, indeed, with Athalie, Zaire, or 

5 Saul ; ^ but, Ave think, not below Cinna, and certainly above 
any other English tragedy of the same school, above many 
of the plays of Corneille, above many of the plays of Vol- 
taire and Alfieri, and above some plays of Racine. Be this 
as it may, we have little doubt that Cato did as much as 

10 the Tatlers, Spectators, and Freeholders united to raise 
Addison's fame among his contemporaries. 

The modesty and good nature of the successful dramatist 
had tamed even the nuilignity of faction. But literary 
envy, it should seem, is a fiercer passion than party spirit. 

15 It was by a zealous Whig that the fiercest attack on the 
Whig tragedy was made. John Dennis published remarks 
on Cato, which were written with some acuteness, and with 
much coarseness and asperity. Addison neither defended 
himself nor retaliated. On many points he had an excel- 

20 lent defense ; and nothing would have been easier than to 
retaliate ; for Dennis had Avritten bad odes, bad tragedies, 
bad comedies : he had, moreover, a larger share than most 
men of those infirmities and eccentricities which excite 
laughter ; and Addison's power of turning either an absurd 

25 book or an absurd man into ridicule was unrivaled. Addi- 
son, however, serenely conscious of his superiority, looked 
with pity on his assailant, whose temper, naturally irritable 
and gloomy, had been soured by want, by controversy, and 
by literary failures. 

30 But among the young candidates for Addison's favor 
there was one distinguished by talents from the rest, and 
distinguished, we fear, not less by malignity and insincerity. 
Pope was only twenty -five. ^ But his powers had expanded 
to their full maturity ; and his best poem, the Rape of the 

35 Lock, had recently been published. Of his genius, Addison 



ON ADDISON. 81 

had always expressed high admiration. But Addison had 
early discerned, what might indeed have been discerned 
by an eye less penetrating than his, that the diminutive, 
crooked, sickly boy was eager to revenge himself on society 
for the unkindness of nature. In The Spectator,^ the Essay 5 
on Criticism had been praised with cordial warmth ; but a 
gentle hint had been added that the writer of so excellent 
a poem would have done well to avoid ill-natured personali- 
ties. Pope, though evidently more galled by the censure 
than gratified by the praise, returned thanks for the admo- lo 
nition, and promised to profit by it. The two writers con- 
tinued to exchange civilities, counsel, and small good offices. 
Addison publicly extolled Pope's miscellaneous pieces ; and 
Pope furnished Addison with a prologue. This did not 
last long. Pope hated Dennis, whom he had injured with- 15 
out provocation. The appearance of the Remarks on Cato 
gave the irritable poet an opportunity of venting his malice 
under the show of friendship, and such an opportunity 
could not be but welcome to a nature which was implacable 
in enmity, and which always preferred the tortuous to the 20 
straight path. He published, accordingly, the Narrative 
of the Frenzy of John Dennis. But Pope had mistaken 
his powers. He was a great master of invective and sar- 
casm. He could dissect a character in terse and sonorous 
couplets, brilliant with antithesis; but of dramatic talent 25 
he was altogether destitute. If he had written a lampoon 
on Dennis such as that on Atticus, or that on Sporus, the 
old grumbler would have been crushed. But Pope writing 
dialogue resembled — to borrow Horace's imagery and his 
own — a wolf, which, instead of biting, should take to kick-;50 
ing, or a monkey which should try to sting. The Narrative 
is utterly contemptible. Of argument there is not even the 
show; and the jests are such as, if they were introduced 
mto a farce, would call forth the hisses of the shilling gal- 
lery. Dennis raves about the drama ; and the nurse thinks 35 



82 macaulay's essay 

that he is calling for a dram. " There is," he cries, " no 
peripetia in the tragedy, no change of fortune, no change at 
all." " Pray, good sir, be not angry," says the old woman ; 
" I'll fetch change." This is not exactly the pleasantry 
5 of Addison. . 

There can be no doubt that Addison saw through tliis 
officious zeal, and felt himself deeply aggrieved by it. So j 
foolish and spiteful a pamphlet could do him no good, and, 
if he were thought to have any hand in it, must do him ^ 

10 harm. Gifted with incomparable powers of ridicule, he had j 
never, even in self-defense, used those powers inhumanly 
or uncourteously ; and he was not disposed to let others 
make his fame and his interests a pretext under which they 
might commit outrages from which he had himself con- 

15 stantly abstained. He accordingly declared that he had no 
concern in the Narrative, that he disapproved of it, and _ 
that if he answered the Remarks, he would answer themj 
like a gentleman ; and he took care to communicate this to } 
Dennis. Pope was bitterly mortified ; and to this transac- , 

liotion we are inclined to ascribe the hatred with which he 
ever after regarded Addison. 

In Septeml)er, 1713, The Guardian ceased to appear. 
Steele had gone mad about politics. A general election 
had just taken place: he had been chosen member for 

25 Stockbridge ; and he fully expected to play a first part in 
Parliament. The immense success of the Tatler and Spec- 
tator had turned his head. He had been the editor of both 
those papers, and was not aware how entirely they owed 
their influence and popularity to the genius of his friend. 

30 His spirits, always violent, were now excited by vanity, 
ambition, and faction, to such a pitch that he every day 
committed some offense against good sense and good taste. 
All the discreet and moderate members of his own party 
regretted and condemned his folly. " I am in a thousand 

35 troubles," Addison wrote, '' about poor Dick, and wish that 



ON ADDISON. 83 

iiis zeal for the public may not be ruinous to himself. But 
he has sent me word that he is determined to go on, and 
that any advice I may give him in this particular will have 
no weight with him." 

Steele set up a political paper called The Englishman, 5 
which, as it was not supported by contributions from Addi- 
son, completely failed. By this work, by some other writ- 
ings of the same kind, and by the airs which he gave 
himself at the lirst meeting of the new Parliament, he made 
the Tories so angry that they determined to expel him. 10 
The Whigs stood by him gallantly, but were unable to save 
him. The vote of expulsion was regarded by all dispas- 
sionate men as a tyrannical exercise of the power of the 
majority. But Steele's violence and folly, though they by 
no means justified the steps which his enemies took, had 15 
completely disgusted his friends ; nor did he ever regain 
the place which he had held in the public estimation. 

Addison about this time conceived the design of adding 
an eighth volume to The Spectator. In June, 1714, the first 
number of the new series appeared, and during about six 20 
months three papers were published weekly. Nothing can 
be more striking than the contrast between The English- 
man and the eighth volume of The Spectator, between 
Steele without Addison, and Addison Avithout Steele. The 
Englishman is forgotten: the eighth volume of The Spec- 25 
tator contains, perhaps, the finest essays, both serious and 
playful, in the English language. 

Before this volume was completed, the death of Anne 
produced an entire change in the administration of pid^lic 
affairs. The blow fell suddenly. It found the Tory party 30 
distracted by internal feuds, and unprepared for any great 
effort. Harley had just been disgraced. Bolingbroke, it 
was supposed, would be the chief minister. But the queen 
was on her death-bed before the white staff had been given, 
and her last public act was to deliver it Avith a feebh' hand .35 



84 macaulay's essay 

to the Duke of Shrewsbury. The emergency produced a j 
coalition between all sections of public men who were at- 
tached to the Protestant succession. George the First was j 
proclaimed without opposition. A council, in which the 

5 leading Whigs had seats, took the direction of affairs till 
the new king should arrive. The first act of the lords 
justices was to appoint Addison their secretary. \ 

There is an idle tradition that he was directed to prepare ' 
a letter to the king, that he could not satisfy himself as to | 

10 the style of this composition, and that the lords justices 
called in a clerk who at once did what was wanted. It is ■ 
not strange that a story so flattering to mediocrity should 
be popular; and we are sorry to deprive dunces of their 
consolation. But the truth must be told. It was well ob- 

15 served by Sir James Mackintosh, whose knowledge of these 
times was unequaled, that Addison never, in any official , 
document, affected wit or eloquence, and that his despatches 
are, without exception, remarkable for unpretending sim- 
plicity. Everybody who knows with what ease Addison's 

20 finest essays were produced must be convinced that, if well 
turned phrases had been wanted, he Avould have had no i 
difficulty in finding them. We are, however, inclined to ' 
believe that the story is not absolutely without a founda- 
tion. It may well be that Addison did not know, till he 

25 had consulted experienced clerks who remembered the 
times when William the Third was absent on the Conti- \ 
nent, in what form a letter from the Council of Regency to '{ 
the king ought to be drawn. We think it very likely 
that the ablest statesmen of our time, Lord John Russell, 

30 Sir Robert Peel, Lord Palmerston, for example, would, in 
similar circumstances, be found quite as ignorant. Every j 
office has some little mysteries which the dullest man may j 
learn with a little attention, and which the greatest man ' 
cannot possibly know by intuition. One paper must be 

35 signed by the chief of the department ; another by his 



ON ADDISON. 86 

deputy; to a third the royal sign-manual is necessary. 
One communication is to be registered, and another is not. 
One sentence must be in black ink, and another in red ink. 
If the ablest Secretary for Ireland were moved to the India 
Board, if the ablest President of the India Board were 5 
moved to the War Office, he would require instruction on 
points like these ; and we do not doubt that Addison re- 
quired such instruction when he became, for the first time, 
secretary to the lords justices. 

George the First took possession of his kingdom without 10 
opposition. A new ministry was formed, and a new Parlia- 
ment favorable to the Whigs chosen. Sunderland was ap- 
pointed lord-lieutenant of Ireland ; and Addison again went 
to Dublin as chief secretary. 

At Dublin Swift resided ; ' and there was much speculation 15 
about the way in which the dean and the secretary would 
behave towards each other. The relations which existed 
between these remarkable men form an interesting and 
pleasing portion of literary history. They had early at- 
tached themselves to the same political party and to the 20 
same patrons. While Anne's Whig ministry was in power, 
the visits of Swift to London and the oihcial residence of 
Addison in Ireland had given them opportunities of know- 
ing each other. They were the two shrewdest observers of 
their age. But their observations on each other had led 25 
them to favorable conclusions. Swift did full justice to the 
rare powers of conversation which were latent under the 
bashful deportment of Addison. Addison, on the other 
hand, discerned much good-nature under the severe look 
and manner of Swift ; and, indeed, the Swift of 1708 and 30 
the Swift of 1738 were two very different men. 

But the paths of the two friends diverged widely. The 
Whig statesmen loaded Addison with solid benefits. They 
praised Swift, asked him to dinner, and did nothing more 
for him. His profession laid them under a difficulty. In 35 



86 macaulay's essay 

t.lie State they could not promote him ; and they had 
reason to fear that, by bestowing preferment in the Church 
on the author of the Tale of a Tub, they might give scandal 
to the public, which had no high opinion of their orthodoxy. 

5 He did not make fair allowance for the difficulties which 
prevented Halifax and Somers from serving him, thought 
himself an ill-used man, sacrificed honor and consistency to 
revenge, joined the Tories, and became their most formi- 
dable champion. He soon found, however, that his old 

10 friends were less to blame than he had supposed. The 
dislike, with which the queen and the heads of the Church 
regarded him was insurmountable ; and it was with the 
greatest difficulty that he olitained an ecclesiastical dignity 
of no great value, on condition of fixing his residence in a 

15 country which he detested. 

Difference of })olitical opinion had produced, not indeed 
a quarrel, but a coolness between Swift and Addison. They 
at length ceased altogether to see each other. Yet there 
was between them a tacit compact like that between the 

20 hereditary guests in the Iliad. 

E7xea 5' d\\i]\cov dXewfieOa Kal 5i' 6jj.i\ov 
rioXXoJ fi^v yap ifiol TptDes K\eiToi t' i-rriKovpoi, 
KTeiveiv, ov Ke debs ye irbprj Kal iroaai KLxei(^, 
IloXXot 5' a5 cxoi 'Ax^loI, ivalpefiev, ov k€ dvvrjai.^ 

sr) It is not strange that Addison, who calumniated and 
insulted nobody, should not have calumniated or insulted 
Swift. But it is remarkable that Swift, to whom neither 
genius nor virtue was sacred, and who generally seemed to 
find, like most other renegades, a peculiar ])leasure in at- 

30 tacking old friends, should have shown so much respect and 
tenderness to Addison. 

Fortune had now changed. The accession of the house 
of Hanover - had secured in England the liberties of the 
people, and in Ireland the dominion of the I'rotestant caste. 



ON ADDISON. 87 

To that caste Swift was more odious than any other man. 
He was hooted and even pelted in the streets of Dublin ; 
and could not venture to ride along the strand for his health 
without the attendance of armed servants. Many whom he 
had formerly served now libeled and insulted him. At 5 
this time Addison arrived. He had been advised not to 
show the smallest civility to the Dean of St. Patrick's. He 
had answered, with admirable spirit, that it might be nec- 
essary for men whose fidelity to their party was suspected 
to hold no intercourse with political opponents ; but that 10 
one who had been a steady Whig in the worst times might 
venture, when the good cause was triumphant, to shake 
hands with an old friend who Avas one of the vanquished 
Tories. His kindness was soothing to the proud and cru- 
elly wounded spirit of Swift ; and the two great satirists 15 
resumed their habits of friendly intercourse. 

Those associates of Addison whose political opinions 
agreed with his shared his good fortune. He took Tickell 
with him to Ireland. He procured for Budgell a lucrative 
place in the same kingdom. Ambrose Philips was provided 20 
for in England. Steele had injured himself so much by 
his eccentricity and perverseness that he obtained but a 
very small part of Avhat he thought his due. He was, 
however, knighted ; he had a place in the household ; and 
he subsequently received other marks of favor from the 25 
court. 

Addison did not remain long in Ireland. In 1715 he 
quitted his secretaryship for a seat at the P>oard of Trade. 
In the same year his comedy of The Drummer was brought 
on the stage. The name of the author was not announced ; 30 
the piece was coldly received ; and some critics have ex- 
pressed a doubt whether it were really Addison's. To us 
the evidence, both external and internal, seems decisive. It 
is not in xiddisou's best mniiner; but it contains numerous 
passages which no other writei- known to us could have 3,-) 



88 macaitlay's essay 

produced. It was again performed after Addison's death, 
and, being known to be his, was loudly applauded. 

Toward the close of the year 1715, while the rebellion 
was still raging in Scotland,^ Addison published the first 
5 number of a paper called The Freeholder. Among his po- 
litical works The Freeholder is entitled to the first place. 
Even in The Spectator there are few serious papers nobler 
than the character of his friend Lord Somers, and certainly 
no satirical papers superior to those in which the Tory fox- 

10 hunter is introduced. This character is the original of 
Squire Western, and is drawn with all Fielding's force, and 
with a delicacy of which Fielding was altogether destitute. 
As none of Addison's Avorks exhibits stronger marks of his 
genius than The Freeholder, so none does more honor to 

15 his moral character. It is difficult to extol too highly the 
candor and humanity of a political writer whom even the 
excitement of civil war cannot hurry into unseemly violence. 
Oxford, it is well known, was then the stronghold of Tory- 
ism. The High Street had been repeatedly lined with 

20 bayonets in order to keep down the disaffected gownsmen ; 
and traitors pursued by the messengers of the Government 
had been concealed in the garrets of several colleges. Yet 
the admonition which, even under such circumstances, 
Addison addressed to the University,^ is singularly gentle, 

25 respectful, and even affectionate. Indeed, he could not find 
it in his heart to deal harshly even with imaginary persons. 
His fox-hunter, though ignorant, stiipid, and violent, is at 
heart a good fellow, and is at last reclaimed by the clemency 
of the king. Steele was dissatisfied with his friend's mod- 

soeration, and, though he acknowledged that The Freeholder 
was excellently written, complained that the ministry played 
on a lute when it was necessa.ry to blow the trumpet. He 
accordingly determined to execute a flourish after his own 
fashion, and tried to rouse the public spirit of tlie nation 

35 by means of a paper called The Town Talk, which is now 



ON ADDISON. 89 

as utterly forgotten as his Englishman, as his Crisis, as his 
Letter to the Bailiif of Stockbridge, as his lieader ; in short, 
as everything he wrote without the help of Addison. 

In the same year in which The Drummer was acted, and 
in which the first numbers of The Freeholder appeared, 5 
the estrangement of Pope and Addison became complete. 
Addison had from the first seen that Pope was false and 
malevolent. Pope had discovered that Addison was jealous. 
The discovery was made in a strange manner. Pope had 
written The Rape of the Lock, in two cantos, without super- lo 
natural machinery. These two cantos had been loudly ap- 
plauded, and by none more loudly than by Addison. Then 
Pope thought of the Sylphs and Gnomes, Ariel, Momentilla, 
Crispissa, and Umbriel, and res'olved to interweave the 
Eosicrucian mythology with the original fabric.^ He asked 15 
Addison's advice. Addison said that the poem as it stood 
was a delicious little thing, and entreated Pope not to run 
the risk of marring what was so excellent in trying to mend 
it. Pope afterward declared that this insidious counsel 
first opened his eyes to the baseness of him who gave it. 20 

Now there can be no doubt that Pope's plan was most 
ingenious, and that he afterward executed it with great 
skill and success. But does it necessarily follow that Addi- 
son's advice was bad ? And if Addison's advice Avas bad, 
does it necessarily follow that it was given from bad mo- 25 
fives ? If a friend were to ask us whether we would advise 
him to risk his all in a lottery of which the chances wei-e 
ten to one against him, we should do our best to dissuade 
him from running such a risk. Even if he were so lucky 
as to get the thirty thousand pound prize, we should not.'iO 
admit that we had counseled him ill ; and we should cer- 
tainly think it the height of injustice in him to accuse us 
of having been actuated by malice. We think Addison's 
advice good advice. It rested on a sound principle, the 
result of long and wide experience. The general rule un-3.3 



90 macaulay's essay 

doubtedly is that, when a successful work of imagination 
has been produced, it should not be recast. We cannot at 
this moment call to jnind a single instance in which this 
rule has lieen transgressed with happy effect, except the 

5 instance of The Rape of the Lock. Tasso recast his Jeru- 
salem. Akenside recast his Pleasures of the Imagination, 
and his Epistle to Curio. Pope himself, emboldened no 
doubt by the success with which he had expanded and re- 
modeled The Rape of the Lock, made the same experiment 

10 on The Dunciad.^ All these attempts failed. Who was to 
foresee that Pope would, once in his life, be able to do what 
he could not himself do twice, and what nobody else had 
ever done ? 

Addison's advice was good. But had it been bad, why 

15 should we pronounce it dishonest ? Scott tells us that one of 
his best friends predicted the failure of Waverley. Herder 
adjured Goethe not to take so unpromising a subject as 
Faust. Hume tried to dissuade Robertson from writing 
the History of Charles the Fifth. Nay, Pope himself was 

20 one of those who prophesied that Cato would never succeed 
on the stage, and advised Addison to print it without risk- 
ing a representation. But Scott, Goethe, Robertson, Addi- 
son, had the good sense and the generosity to give their 
advisers credit for the best intentions. Pope's heart was 

25 not of the same kind with theirs. 

In 1715, while he was engaged in translating the Iliad, 
he met Addison at a coffee house. Philips and Budgell 
were there ; but their sovereign got rid of them, and asked 
Pope to dine with him alone. After dinner, Addison said 

.30 that he lay under a difficulty which he wished to explain. 
" Tickell," he said, " translated, some time ago, the first 
book of the Iliad. I have promised to look it over and 
correct it. I cannot, therefore, ask to see yours, for that 
would be doiable dealing." Pope made a civil reply, and 

35 begged that his second book might have the advantage of 



ON ADDISON. 91 

Addison's revision. Addison readily agreed, looked over the 
second book, and sent it back with warm commendations. 

Tickell's version of the first book appeared soon after 
this conversation. In the preface, all rivalry was earnestly 
disclaimed. Tickell declared that he should not go on with 5 
the Iliad. That enterprise he should leave to powers which 
he admitted to be superior to his own. His only view, he 
said, in publishing this specimen was to bespeak the favor 
of the public to a translation of the Odyssey, in which he 
had made some progress. lo 

Addison, and Addison's devoted followers, pronounced 
both the versions good, but maintained that Tickell's had 
more of the original. The town gave a decided preference 
to Pope's. We do not think it worth while to settle such 
a question of precedence. Neither of the rivals can be said 15 
to have translated the Iliad, unless, indeed, the word trans- 
lation be used in the sense which it bears in the Midsummer 
Night's Dream. When Bottom makes his appearance witli 
an ass's head instead of his own, Peter Quince exclaims, 
"Bless thee! Bottom, bless thee ! thou art translated." In 20 
this , sense, undoubtedly, the readers of either Pope or 
Tickell may very properly exclaim, " Bless thee. Homer ! 
thou art translated indeed." 

Our readers will, we hope, agree with us in thinking that 
no man in Addison's situation could have acted more fairly 25 
and kindly, both towards Pope and towards Tickell, than 
lie appears to have done. But an odious suspicion had 
sprung up in the mind of Pope. He fancied, and he soon 
firmly believed, that there was a deep conspiracy against his 
fame and his fortunes. The work on which he had staked 30 
his reputation was to be depreciated. The subscription, on 
which rested his hopes of a competence, was to be defeated. 
\Vith this view Addison had made a rival translation : 
Tickell had consented to father it : and the wits of Button's 
had united to puff it. 35 



92 macaulay's essay 

Is there auy external evidence to support this grave ac- 
cusation ? The answer is short. There is absohitely none. 
Was there any internal evidence which proved Addison 
to be the author of this version? Was it a work which 

5 Tickell was incapable of producing ? Surely not. Tickell 
was a fellow of a college at Oxford, and must be supposed 
to have been able to construe the Iliad ; and he was a better 
versifier than his friend. We are not aware that Pope pre- 
tended to have discovered any turns of expression peculiar 

10 to Addison. Had such turns of expression been discovered, 
they would be sufficiently accounted for by supposing Addi- 
son to hav-e corrected his friend's lines, as he owned that 
he had done. 

Is there anything in the character of the accused persons 

15 which makes the accusation probable ? We answer confi- 
dently — ^ nothing. Tickell was long after this time de- 
scribed by Pope himself as a very fair and worthy man. 
Addison had been, during many years, before the public. 
Literary rivals, political opponents, had kept their eyes on 

20 him. But neither envy nor faction, in their utmost rage, 
had ever imputed to him a single deviation from the laws 
of honor and of social morality. Had he been indeed a man 
meanly jealous of fame, and capable of stooping to base and 
wicked arts for the purpose of injuring his competitors, 

25 would his vices have remained latent so long ? He was a 
writer of tragedy: had he ever injured Rowe ? He was a 
writer of comedy : had he not done ample justice to Cout 
greve, and given valuable help to Steele ? He was a pam- 
phleteer: have not his good-nature and generosity been 

:30 acknowledged by Swift, his rival in fame and his adversary 
in politics ? 

That Tickell should have been guilty of a villainy seems 
to us highly improbable. That Addison should have been 
giulty of a villainy seems to us highly improbable. l>ut 

35 that these two men should have conspired together to com- 



ON ADDISON. 93 

mit a villainy seems to us improbable in a tenfold degree. 
All that is known to us of their intercourse tends to prove 
that it was not the intercourse of two accomplices in crime. 
These are some of the lines in which Tickell poured forth 
his sorrow over the colhn of Addison : — 5 

" Or dost thou warn poor mortals left behind, 
A task well suited to thy gentle mind? 
Oh, if sometimes thy spotless form descend, 
To me thine aid, thou guardian genius, lend. 
When rage misguides me, or when fear alarms, 10 

When pain distresses, or when pleasure charms, 
In silent whisperings purer thoughts impart, 
And turn from ill a frail and feeble heart ; 
Lead through the paths thy virtue trod before, 
Till bliss shall join, nor death can part us more." 15 

In what words, we should like to know, did this guardian 
genius invite his pupil to join in a plan such as the editor 
of The Satirist would hardly dare to propose to the editor 
of The Age?i 

We do not accuse Pope of bringing an accusation which 20 
he knew to be false. We have not the smallest doubt that 
he believed it to be true ; and the evidence on which he 
believed it he found in his own bad heart. His own life 
was one long series of tricks, as mean and as malicious as 
that of which he suspected Addison and Tickell. He was 25 
all stiletto and mask. To injure, to insult, and to save 
himself from the consequences of injury and insult by lying 
and equivocating, was the habit of his life. He published 
a lampoon on the Duke of Chandos ; he was taxed with it, 
and he lied and equivocated. He published a lampoon on 30 
Aaron Hill ; he was taxed with it, and he lied and equivo- 
cated. He published a still fouler lampoon on Lady Mary 
Wortley Montague; he was taxed with it, and he lied Avith 
more than usual effrontery and vehemence. He puffed him- 
self, and abused his enemies under feigned names. He o5 



94 macaulay's essay 

robbed himself of his own letters, and then raised the hue 
and cry after them. Besides his frauds of malignity, of 
fear, of interest, and of vanity, there were frauds which he 
seems to have committed from love of fraud alone. He 
shad a habit of stratagem, a x>leasure in outwitting all who 
came near him. Whatever his object might be, the indirect 
road to it was that which he preferred. For Bolingbroke 
Pope undoubtedly felt as much love and veneration as it 
was in his nature to feel for any human being. Yet Pope 

10 was scarcely dead when it was discovered that, from no 
motive except the mere love of artifice, he had been guilty 
of an act of gross perfidy to P>olingbroke. 

Nothing was more natural than that su(;li a man as this 
should attribute to others that Avhich he felt within himself. 

^^ A plain, probable, coliereut explanation is frankly given to 
him. He is certain that it is all a romance. A line of con- 
duct scrupulously fair, and even friendly, is pursued toward 
him. Pie is convinced that it is merely a cover for a vile 
intrigue by which he is to be disgraced and ruined. It is 

20 vain to ask him for proofs. He has none, and wants none, 
except those which he carries in his own bosom. 

Whether Pope's malignity at length provoked Addison to 
retaliate for the first and last time, cannot now be known 
with certainty. AVe have only Pope's story, which runs 

25 thus. A jDamphlet appeared containing some reflections 
which stung Pope to the quick. What those reflections 
were, and whether they were reflections of v/hieh he had a 
right to complain, we have now no means of deciding. The 
JCarl of Warwick,^ a foolish and vicious lad, who regarded 

•'0 Addison with the feelings with which such lads generally 
regard their best friends, told Pope, truly or falsely, that 
this pamphlet had been written by Addison's direction. 
When we consider what a tendency stories have to grow, in 
passing even from one honest man to another honest man, 

'j5 and when we consider that to the name of honest man 



ON ADDISON. 95 

neither Pope nor the Earl of Warwick had a claim, we are 
not disposed to attach much importance to this anecdote. 

It is certain, however, that Pope was furious. He had 
already sketched the character of Atticus in prose. In his 
anger he turned this prose into the brilliant and energetics 
lines which everybody knows by heart,^ or ought to knov,- 
by heart, and sent them to Addison. One charge which 
Pope has enforced with great skill is probably not withor.t 
foundation. Addison was, avc are inclined to believe, too 
fond of presiding over a circle of humble friends. Of the 10 
other imputations Avhich these famous lines are intended to 
convey, scarcely one has ever been proved to be just, and 
some are certainly false. That Addison was not in tlic^ 
habit of "damning with faint praise " appears from innu- 
merable passages in his Avritings, and from none more than 15 
from those in which he mentions Pope. And it is not 
merely unjust, but ridiculous, to describe a man who made 
the fortune of almost every one of his intimate friends, as 
;*'so obliging that he ne'er obliged." 

That Addison felt the sting of Pope's satire keenly, Ave 20 
cannot doul)t. That he Avas conscious of one of the Aveak- 
nesses Avith Avliich he Avas reproached, is highly probable. 
But his heart, Ave firmly believe, acquitted him of the grav- 
est part of the accusation. He acted like himself. Asa 
satirist, he Avas, at his own Aveapons, more than Pope's 25 
match; and he Avould have been at no loss for topics. A 
distorted and diseased body, tenanted by a yet more dis- 
torted and diseased mind; spite and envy thinly disguised 
by sentiments as benevolent and noble as those Avhich Sir 
Peter Teazle admired in Mr. Joseph Surface; a feeble, 30 
sickly licentiousness; an odious love of filthy and noisome 
images; these Avere things Avhich a genius less poAverful 
than that to which Ave OAve The Spectator could easily have 
hcddnpto the mirth and hatred of mankind. Addison had, 
moreover, at his command other means of vengeance Avhich 35 



96 macaulay's essay 

a bad man would not have scrupled to use. He was power- 
ful in the State. Pope was a Catholic; and, in those times, 
a minister would have found it easy to harass the most inno- 
cent Catholic by innumerable petty vexations. Pope, near 

5 twenty years later, said that "through the lenity of the 
Government alone he could live with comfort." "Con- 
sider," he exclaimed, "the injury that a man of high rank 
and credit may do to a private person, under penal laws 
and many other disadvantages." It is pleasing to reflect 

10 that the only revenge which Addison took was to insert in 
The Preeholdev ^ a Avarm encomium on the translation of 
the Iliad, and to exhort all lovers of learning to put down 
their names as subscribers. There could be no doubt, he 
said, from the specimens already published, that tlie mas- 

15 terly hand of Pope would do as much for Homer as Dryden 
had done for Virgil. From that time to the end of his life, 
he always treated Pope, by Pope's own acknowledgment, 
with justice. Friendship was, of course, at an end. 

One reason which induced the Earl of Warwick to play 

20 the ignominious part of tale-bearer on this occasion, may 
have been his dislike of the marriage which was about to 
take place between his mother and Addison. The Countess 
Dowager, a daughter of the old and honorable family of 
the Myddletons of Chirk, a family which, in any country 

25 but ours, would be called noble, resided at Holland House." 

Addison had, during some years, occupied at Chelsea a 

small dwelling, once the abode of Nell Gwynn.^ Chelsea 

is now a district of London, and Holland House may be 

called a town residence. But, in the days of Anne and 

30 George the First, milkmaids and sportsmen Avandered 
between green hedges and over fields bright Avith daisies, 
from Kensington almost to the shore of the Thames. Ad- 
dison and Lady WarAvick Avere country neighbors, and 
became intimate friends. The great Avit and scholar tried 

35 to allure the young lord from the fashionable amusements 



r ON ADDISON. 97 

"of beating watcliraen, breaking windows, and rolling women 
I in hogsheads down Holborn Hill, to the study of letters 
and the practice of virtue. These well-meant exertions did 
little good, however, either to the disciple or to the master. 
Lord Warwick grew up a rake; and Addison fell in love. 5 
The mature beauty of the countess has been celebrated by 
poets in language which, after a very large allowance has 
been made for flattery, would lead us to believe that she 
was a fine woman; and her rank doubtless heightened her 
attractions. The courtship was long. The hopes of the 10 
lover appear to have risen and fallen with the fortunes of 
his party. His attachment was at length matter of such 
notoriety that, when he visited Ireland for the last time, 
Rnv/e ^ addressed some consolatory verses to the Chloe of 
Holland House. It strikes us as a little strange that, in 15 
[these verses, Addison should be called Lycidas, a name of 
singularly evil omen for a swain just about to cross St. 
George's Channel.^ 

At length Chloe capitulated. Addison was indeed able 
to treat with her on equal terms. He had reason to expect 20 
preferment even higher than that which he had attained. 
He had inherited the fortune of a brother who died Gov- 
ernor of Madras. He had purchased an estate in Warwick- 
shire, and had been welcomed to his domain in very tolerable 
verse by one of the neighboring squires, the poetical fox- 25 
hunter, William Somerville. In August, 1716, the news- 
papers announced that Joseph Addison, Esquire, famous for 
many excellent works both in verse and prose, had espoused 
the Countess Dowager of Warwick. 

He now fixed his abode at Holland House, a house which ;?() 
can boast of a greater number of inmates distinguished in 
political and literary history than any other private dwell- 
ing in England. His portrait still hangs there. The feat- 
ures are pleasing; the complexion is remarkably fair; but, 
in the expression, we trace rather the gentleness of his 35 



98 maoaulay's essay 

disposition tlian the force and keenness of his Intel 
lect. 

Not long after his marriage he reached the height of civi]| 
greatness. The Whig Government had, during some time 

5 been torn by internal dissensions. Lord Townshend led, 
one section of the cabinet, Lord Sunderland the other. At 
length, in the spring of 1717, Sunderland triumphed.' 
Townshend retired from office, and was accompanied by 
Walpole and Cowper. Sunderland proceeded to reconstruct 

10 the ministry, and Addison was appointed Secretary oi 
State. It is certain that the Seals were pressed upon* 
him, and were at first declined by him. Men equally, 
versed in official business might easily have been found ;■< 
and his colleagues knew that they could not expect assist- , 

inance from him in debate. He owed his elevation to 
his popularity, to his stainless probity, and to his literary 
fame. 

But scarcely had Addison entered the cabinet when his< 
health began to fail. From one serious attack he recovered, 

20 in the autumn; and his recovery was celebrated in Latin ' 
verses, worthy of his own pen, by Vincent Bourne, who" 
was then at Trinity College, Cambridge. A relapse soon 
took place; and, in the following spring, Addison was pre- 
vented by a severe asthma from discharging the duties oi\ 

25 his post. He resigned it, and was succeeded by his friend 
Craggs, a young man whose natural parts, though little im- 
proved by cultivation, were quick and showy, whose grace- 
ful person and winning manners had made him generally 
acceptable in society, and who, if he had lived, would 

30 probably have been the most formidable of all the rivals of i 

Walpole. I 

As yet there was no Joseph Hume.^ The ministers, 

therefore, were able to bestow on Addison a retiring pension 

of £1500 a year. In what form this pension was given 

35 we are not told by the biographers, and have not time to 



ON ADDISON. 99 

I 

inquire. But it is certain that Addison did not vacate his 
"seat in tlie House of Commons. 

llest of mind and body seemed to have re-established his 
health; and he thanked God, with cheerful piety, for having 
set him free both from his office and from his asthma. 5 
Many years seemed to be before him, and he meditated 
nniny works, a tragedy on the death of Socrates, a transla- 
tion of the Psalms, a treatise on the evidences of Chris- 
tianity. Of this last performance, a part, which we could 
I well spare, has come down to us. lO 

« But the fatal complaint soon returned, and gradually 
prevailed against all the resources of medicine. It is 
melancholy to think that the last months of such a life 
should have been overclouded both by domestic and by po- 
litical vexations. A tradition which began early, which has 15 
been generally received, and to which we have nothing to 
op}iose, has represented his wife as an an-ogant and impe- 
rious woman. It is said that, till his health failed him, he 
was glad to escape from the Countess Dowager and her 
magnificent dining-room, blazing with the gilded devices of 20 
the house of Ilich, to some tavern where he could enjoy a 
(laugh, a talk about Virgil and Boileau,-and a bottle of claret, 
with the friends of his happier days. All those friends, 
however, were not left to him. Sir Richard Steele had 
been gradually estranged by various causes. He considered 25 
himself as one who, in evil times, had braved martyrdom 
for his political principles, and demanded, when the Whig 
party was triumphant, a large compensation for Avhat he 
had suffered when it was militant. The WJiig leaders took 
a very different view of his claims. They thought that he 30 
had, by his own petulance and folly, brought them as well 
as himself into trouble, and, though they did not absolutely 
neglect him, doled out favors to him with a sparing hand. 
It Avas natural that lie should Ix^ angry with tliem, and 
especially angry with Addison. But what above all seems 35 



100 macaulay's essay 

to have disturbed Sir Richard was the elevation of Tickell, i 
who, at thirty, was made by Addison Under-Secretary of 
State; while the editor of the Tatler and Spectator, the 
author of The Crisis, the member for Stockbridge who had ' 
•'> been persecuted for firm adherence to the house of Hanover, 
was, at near fifty, forced, after many solicitations and com- ] 
plaints, to content himself with a share in the patent of 
Drury Lane Theater. Steele himself says, in his celebrated 
letter to Congreve, that Addison, by his preference ot ] 

10 Tickell, " incurred the warmest resentment of other gentle j 

men"; and everything seems to indicate that, of those 'j 

resentful gentlemen, Steele was himself one. \ 

While poor Sir Richard was brooding over what he con- . 

sidered as Addison's unkindness, a new cause of quarrel 

15 arose. The Whig party, already divided against itself, was 
rent by a new schism. The celebrated bill for limiting the 
number of peers had been brouglit in.^ The proud Duke of. 
Somerset, first in rank of all the nobles whose religion 
permitted them to sit in Parliament, was the ostensible 

20 author of the measure. But it was supported, and, in 
truth, devised by the Prime Minister. 

We are satisfied that the bill was most pernicious ; ^ and ' 
we fear that the motives which induced Sunderland to 
frame it were not honorable to him. But we cannot deny 

25 that it was supported by many of the best and wisest men ' 
of that age. ISTor was this strange. The royal prerogative 
had, within the memory of the generation then in the 
vigor of life, been so grossly abused, that it was still 
regarded with a jealousy which, when the peculiar situation 

30 of the house of Brunswick is considered, may perhaps be 
called immoderate. The particular prerogative of creating 
peers had, in the opinion of the Whigs, been grossly abused 
by Queen Anne's last ministry; and even the Tories ad- 
mitted that her majesty, in swamping, as it has since been 

35 called, the Upper House, had done wluit only ;i,n extroiuG 



ON ADDISON. 101 

case could justify. The theory of the English constitution, 
according to many high authorities, was that three inde- 
pendent powers — the sovereign, the nobility, and the Com- 
mons — ought constantly to act as checks on each other. If 
this theory were sound, it seemed to follow that to put one 5 
of these powers under the absolute control of the other two 
was absurd. But if the number of peers were unlimited, 
it could not well be denied that the Upper House was under 
the absolute control of the crown and the Commons, and 
was indebted only to their moderation for any power which 10 
it might be suffered to retain. 

Steele took part Avith the opposition, Addison with the 
ministers. Steele, in a paper called The Plebeian, vehe- 
mently attacked the bill. Sunderland called for help on 
Addison, and Addison obeyed the call. In a paper called 15 
The Old Whig, he answered, and indeed refuted, Steele's 
arguments. It seems to us that the premises of both the 
controversialists were unsound, that, on those premises, 
Addison reasoned well and Steele ill, and that conse- 
quently Addison brought out a false conclusion while Steele 20 
blundered upon the truth. In style, in wit, and in polite- 
ness, Addison maintained his superiority, though The Old 
Whig is by no means one of his happiest performances. 

At first both the anonymous opponents observed the laws 
of propriety. But at length Steele so far forgot himself as 25 
to throw an odious imputation on the morals of the chiefs 
of the administration. Addison replied with severity, but, 
in our opinion, with less severity than was due to so grave 
an offense against morality and decorum ; nor did he, in 
his just anger, forget for a moment the laws of good taste 30 
and good breeding. One calumny which lias been often re- 
peated, and never yet contradicted, it is our duty to expose. 
It is asserted in the Biographia Britannica that Addison 
designated Steele as "little Dicky." This assertion was 
repeated by Johnson, who liad never seen The Old Whig, .35 



102 MACAULAY'S ESSAY 

and was therefore excusable. It has also been repeated 
by Miss Aikiu, who has seen The Old Whig, and for whom 
therefore there is less excuse. Now, it is true that the 
words " little Dicky " occur in The Old Wliig, and that 

5 Steele's name was Richard. It is equally true that the 
words " little Isaac " occur in the Duenna, and that New- 
ton's name was Isaac. But we confidently affirm that Ad- 
dison's little Dicky had no more to do with Steele than 
Sheridan's little Isaac with Newton. If we apply the 

10 words "little Dicky" to Steele, we deprive a very lively 
and ingenious passage, not only of all its wit, but of all its 
meaning. Little Dicky was the nickname of some comic 
actor, who played the usurer Gomez, then a most popular 
part, in Dryden's Spanish Friar. 

15 The merited reproof which Steele had received, though 
softened by some kind and courteous expressions, galled 
him bitterly. He replied with little force and great acri- 
mony; but no rejoinder appeared. Addison was fast has- 
tening to his grave; and had, we may well suppose, little 

20 disposition to prosecute a quarrel with an old friend. His 
complaint had terminated in dropsy. He bore up long 
and manfully. But at length he abandoned all hope, dis- 
missed his physicians, and calmly prepared himself to die. 
His works he intrusted to the care of Tickell, and dedi- 

25cated them a very few days before his death to Craggs, in 
a letter written with tlie sweet and graceful eloquence of a 
Saturday's Spectator. In tliis, his last composition, he 
alluded to his approacliing end in words so manly, so cheer- 
ful, and so tender, that it is difficult to read them without 

30 tears. At the same time he earnestly recommended tlie 
interests of Tickell to the care of Craggs. 

Within a few hours of the time at which this dedication 
was written, Addison sent to beg Gay, who was then living 
by his wits about town, to come to Holland House. ^ Gay 

35 went, and was received with great kindness. To his amaze- 



ON ADDISON. 103 

ment liis forgiveness was implored. b\' the dying man. Poor 
Gay, the most good-natured and simple of mankind, could 
not imagine what he had to forgive. There was, however, 
some wrong, the remembrance of which weighed on Addi- 
son's mind, and wliicli he declared himself anxious to re- 5 
pair. He Avas in a state of extreme exhaustion ; and the 
})arting was doubtless a friendly one on both sides. Gay 
sup})osed that some plan to serve him had been in agitation 
at court, and had been frustrated by Addison's influence. 
Xor is this improbable. Gay had. paid assiduous court to 10 
the royal family. But in the queen's days he had been the 
eulogist of Bolingbroke, and was still connected with many 
Tories. It is not strange that Addison, while heated by 
conflict, should have thought himself justified in obstruct- 
ing the preferment of one whom he might regard as a po- 15 
litical enemy. Neither is it strange that, when reviewing 
his whole life, and earnestly scrutinizing all his motives, 
he should think that he had acted an unkind and ungener- 
ous part, in using his power against a distressed man of 
letters, who was as harmless and as helpless as a child. 20 

One inference may be drawn from tliis anecdote. It 
appears that Addison, on his death-bed, called himself to a 
strict account, and was not at ease till he had asked pardon 
for an injury which it was not even suspected that he had 
committed, for an injury which would have caused disquiet 25 
onl}' to a very tender conscience. Is it not, then, reason- 
able to infer that, if he had really been guilty of forming 
a base conspiracy against the fame and fortunes of a rival, 
he would have expressed some remorse for so serious a 
crime? But it is unnecessary to multiply arguments and .30 
evidence for the defense, when there is neither argument 
nor evidence for the accusation. 

The last moments of Addison were perfectly serene. 
His interview with his step-son is iiniversally known. 
"See," lie said, "how a C!hristian can die." The piety of ."5 



104 macaulay's essay 

Addison was, in truth, of a singularly cheerful character. 
The feeling which predominates in all his devotional writ- 
ings is gratitude. God was to him the all-wise and all- 
powerful friend who had watched over his cradle with more 

5 than maternal tenderness; who had listened to his cries 
before they could form themselves in prayer; who had 
preserved his youth from the snares of vice ; who had made 
his cup run over with worldly blessings; who had doubled 
the value of those blessings by bestowing a thankful heart 

10 to enjoy them, and dear friends to partake them ; who had 
rebuked the waves of the Ligurian Gulf,^ had purified the 
autumnal air of the Campagna, and had restrained the ava- 
lanches of Mont Cenis. Of the Psalms, his favorite was 
that which represents the Ruler of all things under the 

15 endearing image of a shepherd, whose crook guides the 
flock safe, through gloomy and desolate glens, to meadows 
well watered and rich with herbage. On that goodness to 
which he ascribed all the happiness of his life, he relied 
in the hour of death with the love which casteth out fear. 

20 He died on the 17th of June, 1719. He had just entered 
on his forty-eighth year. 

His body lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, and 
was borne thence to the Abbey at dead of night. ^ The choir 
sung a funeral hymn. Bisliop Atterbury, one of those 

25 Tories who had loved and honored the most accomplished 
of the Whigs, met the corpse, and led the procession by 
torchlight round the shrine of Saint Edward and the graves 
of the Plantagenets, to the Chapel of Henry the Seventh. 
On the north side of that chapel, in the vault of the house 

30 of Albemarle, the coffin of Addison lies next to the coffin 
of Montague. Yet a few months, and the same mourners 
passed again along the same aisle. The same sad anthem 
was again chanted. The same vault was again opened, 
and the coffin of Craggs was placed close to the coffin of 

35 Addison. 



ON ADDISON. 105 

Many tributes were paid to the memory of Addison; but 
one alone is now remembered. Tickell bewailed his friend 
in an elegy which would do honor to the greatest name in 
our literature, and which unites the energy and magnificence 
of Dryden to the tenderness and purity of Cowper. This 5 
fine poem was prefixed to a superb edition of Addison's 
works, which was published, in 1721, by subscription. The 
names of the subscribers proved how widely his fame had 
been spread. That his countrymen should be eager to pos- 
sess his writings, even in a costly form, is not wonderful, lo 
But it is wonderful that, though English literature was then 
little studied on the Continent, Spanish grandees, Italian 
prelates, marshals of France, should be found in the list. 
Among the most remarkable names are those of the Queen 
of Sweden, of Prince Eugene, of the Grand Duke of Tus- 15 
cany, of the Dukes of Parma, Modena, and Guastalla, of 
the Doge of Genoa, of the Regent Orleans, and of Cardinal 
Dubois. We ought to add that this edition, though emi- 
nently beautiful, is in some important points defective; 
nor, indeed, do we yet possess a complete collection of 20 
Addison's writings. 

It is strange that neither his opulent and noble widow, 
nor any of his powerful and attached friends, should have 
thought of placing even a simple tablet, inscribed with his 
name, on the walls of the Abbey. It was not till three 25 
generations had laughed and wept over his pages that the 
omission was supplied by the public veneration. At length, 
in our own time, his image, skillfully graven, appeared in 
Poet's Corner. It represents him, as we can conceive him, 
clad in his dressing-gown, and free from his wig, stepjjingao 
from his parlor at Chelsea into his trim little garden, with 
the account of the Everlasting Club, or the Loves of Hilpa 
and Shalum, just finished for tlie next day's Spectator, in 
his hand. Such a mark of national respect was due to the 
unsullied statesman, to the accoiuplisliccl scholar, to the 35 



106 MACAULAY's essay on ADDISON. 

master of pure English eloquence, to the consummate painter 
of life and manners. It was due, above all, to the great 
satirist, who alone knew how to use ridicule without abus- 
ing it ; who, Avithout inflicting a wound, effected a great 
5 social reform ; and Avho reconciled wit and virtue, after a 
long and disastrous separation, during which wit had been 
led astray by profligacy, and virtue by fanaticism.* 



NOTES. 



Page 15. 1. Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso " (1515). Legendary 
exploits of Charlemagne and his paladins. 

Page 16. 1. Laputan flapper. " Gulliver's Travels," Voyage to 
Laputa, by Dean Swift. 

2. History of England. Macaulay wrote the " History of Eng- 
land," from the accession of James II. The Index in Vol. IV. will 
enable the student to look up most of the references made by Macaulay 
in this essay. 

3. Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618). 
Congreve. English dramatist (1G70-1729). 
Prior. English poet (1004-1721). 

4. Theobald. Author of " Shakespeare Restored." Died, 1774. 

5. Steenkirks. The battle of Steinkirk (between the Allies and 
the French, 1692) gave rise to a new species of neckwear called 
Steinkirks. 

Page 19. 1. Charter House. Originally Chdrtre^ise, from old 
monastery, converted into hospital and school, and endowed. 

Page 21. 1. Buchanan. Scottish divine and author (1506-1582). 

Page 23. 1. Cock-lane Ghost. BoswelTs "Life of Johnson," 
Chap. IX. 

2. Ireland's Vortigern. Attempt to pass off forgeries as Shake- 
speare's work. 

3. Thundering Legion. Supposed miraculous preservation, a.d. 174. 
See Smith's "Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biograi^hy," Art. 
Aurelius. 

4. Agbarus. A tradition that our Lord sent a letter to him, with 
handkerchief, bearing impress of the divine face. 

Page 25. 1. Whig party in the House of Commons. Montagu's 
rise and relation to Whigs, in Macaulay's " History," Vol. IV., 
Cliap. IS. 

Page 29. 1. Lord Keeper Somers. " Hi.^^tory of England," Vol. 
IV., Chiip. 19. 

107 



108 NOTES. 

Page 30. 1. Peace of Kyswick (1097). End of conflict between 
England and France. 

Page 31. 1. A toast. The reigning belle of the season, whose 
health is often drunk in a toast. See " Tatler," No. 24. 

Page 32. 1. "The Guardian" followed " The Spectator," 1713. 
Not successful. Editors, Steele and Addison. 

2. Malebranche. French philosopher. Metaphysical and religious 
treatises. He has been likened to F^nelon. 

3. Boileau. French poet and satirist. Racine, Moli^re, and La 
Fontaine were his intimate friends. 

Page 33. 1. Sir Joshua. Mrs. Thrale. See Macaulay's " Essay 
on Samuel Johnson." 

Page 34. 1. Pollio. Roman Poet and historian (b.c. 76-a.d. 6). 
Fourth Eclogue of Virgil addressed to him. Livy, born at Padua, near 
the Po. 

Page 36. 1. Liguria. Territory of Genoa and Nice. 

2. " How are thy servants blest, Lord !" A favorite hymn in 
Church hymn books. Ten stanzas. " Spectator," No. 489. 

Page 38. 1. Psestum. Ancient city of Lucania. Fine ruins of 
temples. Now much visited by tourists. 

Page 39. 1. Philip the Fifth. "History of England," Vol. IV., 
Chap. 23. 

2. Tomb of Misenus, trumpeter of ^neas (Virgil). Misenum, 
promontory, Bay of Naples. 

Page 40. 1. Duke of Shrewsbury. "History of England," Vol. IV. 

2. Eugene. Read "The Spectator," Paper 2G3. For Addison's 
estimate of the value of foreign travel, see "Spectator," No. 304. 

Page 43. 1. Godolphin and Marlborough. " History of Eng- 
land," Vol. IV. 

Page 46. 1. Similitude of the Angel. See page 49 ; also Johnson's 
" Lives of the Poets," Vol. II., Addison. 

Page 47. 1. Lifeguardsman Shaw. A corporal at Waterloo, kill- 
ing four of the Imperial Guard, but overpowered by two others. 

Page 49. 1. The simile. What is the difference between a simile 
and a metaphor ? See Webster's International Dictionary. 

Page 51. 1. The student may find all the allusions in this well- 
packed paragraph, by consulting the " Encyclopfedia Britannica." The 
Spectre Huntsman and Francesca di Rimini, Dante's "Inferno," V., 
should be looked up, at any rate. 

Page 52. 1. Sacheverell. See Macaulay's " Essay on Lord 
Mahon's History of the War of the Succession." 



NOTES. 101) 

Page 53. 1. Chatham, William Pitt. Prime Minister of England, 
1766. 

Fox, Charles James. Secretary of State, 1782. 

2. "Conduct of the Allies." Tract by Swift. 1712. 

Page 54. 1. The Cowper here mentioned was a kinsman of the 
poet, William Cowper (1731-1800). 

Page 55. 1. The brilliant Mary Montague. Wife of English Am- 
bassador to Constantinople (1716) ; corresponded with Pope and 
Addison ; first introduced inoculation into England. 

2. The malignant Pope. This epithet which Macaulay uses to 
characterize Pope, and the remarks, on the following page, concerning 
Swift's animosity, together with the " coolness " between Addi.son and 
Swift, desci'ibed on page 86, are in harmony with Macaulay's defense 
of Addison throughout this essay. It is hardly to be supposed that 
Addison, with his amiable disposition, could have designedly given 
offense to these authors. At the same time, the "civil leer," spoken 
of on page 56, and the " failings " of Addison, alluded to on page 57, 
show that Macaulay was not blind to his weaknesses. 

Page 58. 1. Budgell was represented in "The Spectator," by 
Paper 116. 

2. Tickell api^ears often in the life of Addison ; perhaps his hatred 
of Steele made the latter an enemy at last of Addison. Compare 
page !)!). 

Page 60. 1. Rival bnlls in Virgil. " Georgics," III. 

Page 62. 1. Will's and the Grecian; also, page 73, Child's and 
the St. James. Names of coffeehouses which were frequented by 
cliques. 

Page 63. 1. "The Tatler." Notice that this was Addison's first 
attempt at writing essays, such as in "The Spectator" won him his 
greatest laurels. 

Page 65. 1. In the foregoing paragraph, Macaulay sums np Ad- 
dison's most brilliant literary gifts. 

Page 66. 1. Addison's humor may not seem to us of this day, 
especially to Americans, as superior as Macaulay describes it. But 
there is certainly a delicate flavor in it, which cannot be found in the 
coarser wits of his times. 

Page 68. 1. Hale and Tillotson. See Fronde's "History," I., 
194-201. Also, Taine's "English Literature," II., 60. 

2. One still better paper. " Tatler," 257. 

Page 69. For further study of Queen Anne's reign, see Art. 
Britain, "Encyclopaedia Britannica." 



110 NOTES. 

2. The Pretender. Wlio was he ? 

Page 71. 1. Stelhi. See Johnson's " Lives of the Poets," Vol. 
ni., Joniitlian Swift. 

Page 74. 1. Fielding (1707-1754). See Taine's "English Lit- 
erature," l>k. III., Chap. 6. 

2. Smollett (1721-1771), ditto, in Taine. 
Page 76. V No.s. 26, 09, 159, 317, 329, 343, 517. 
Page 77. 1. Cato on the stage. Interesting account by Dr. John- 
son, in " Lives of the Poets," Vol. II., Addison. Macaulay seems to 
have copied much here from Johnson. 

Page 80. 1. " Athalie ; Saul ; Cinna." Tragedies respectively by 
Eacine, 1639-1099; Alfieri, 1749-1803; Corneille, 1006-1681. 
2. Pope. " Lives of the Poets," Vol. IV. 
Page 81. 1. Paper No. 253. 

Page 85. 1. Swift published "Gulliver's Travels," 1726. See 
Johnson's " Lives." 

Page 86. 1. Compare Pope's translation, " Iliad," V-I., lines 281- 
285: — 

"My guest in Argos thou, and I in Lycia thine. 
Enough of Trojans to this lance shall yield, 
In the full harvest of yon ample field ; 
Enough of Greeks shall dye thy spear with gore; 
But thou and Diomed be foes no more." 

2. House of Hanover. George I., crowned 1714. 

Page 88. 1. Rebellion in Scotland. The Earl of Mar proclaimed 
the Pretender, assisted by France. 

2. Admonition to the University. "Freeholder," No. .33. 

Page 89. 1. Rosicrucian mythology. Christian Rosenkreuz, a 
German nobleman of the fourteenth century. See Art. (Rosicrucians) 
My.sticism, "Encyclopaedia Britannica." 

Page 90. 1. "The Dunciad." Read Taine's criticism, " History 
of Literature," Vol. II., Bk. III., Cliap. 7. 

Page 93. 1. " The Satirist " and " The Age." Scurrilous news- 
papers, issued in London. Macaulay may have suffered himself from 
their attacks. See Ti-evelyan's " Life and Letters of Macaulay," II., 
Chap. XL, 211. 

Page 94. 1. The Earl of Warwick. Afterwards (1716), Addison's 
stepson. See pages 90 and 103. 

Page 95. 1. Lines which everybody knows by heart (not in 
America), may be found in Pope's "Epistle to Dv. Arbutlmot." 



NOTES. Ill 

Page 96. 1. " Freeholder," Paper No. 40. 

2. Holland House. Built in 1007. Stone gateway designed by 
Inigo Jones. The Countess Dowager was tlie widow of Robert Rich, 
Ivui of Holland and Earl of Warwick. See Macaulay's " Essay on 
the Late Lady Holland." 

3. Nell Gwynn. Actress, favorite of Charles IL, foundetl Chelsea 
Hospital. Died in 1087. 

Page 97. 1. Rowe (1074-1718). Poet and Dramatist. See John- 
son's " Lives." " Rowe's ballad, The Despairing Shepherd, is said to 
have been written on this memorable pair." — Dr. Johnson. 

2. Li Milton's poem, "Lycidas," the author bewails the death of 
a learned friend, Edward King, who was drowned in his passage across 
the Irish channel, in 1037. 

Page 98. 1. Joseph Hume. Political reformer (1777-18.55). As 
a member of Parliament, place hunters found in him their most inexo- 
rable foe. " Encyclopfedia Britannica." 

Page 100. 1. The Number of Peers. " Encyclopsedia" Britan- 
nica," Art. Parliament; Section, Qualification of Members. 

2. The custom of giving no higher title than that of Baronet, for 
distinction in science and literature, was broken in 1857, whtn 
Macaulay was made a Lord. 

Page 102. 1. Gay. Poet and play writer (1085-1732). Johnson's 
"Lives," Vol. III. Addison's apology to him was all the more credita- 
ble because of Gay's second-rate position. 

Page 104. 1. Ligurian Gulf. See note 2, page 30. Recall, also, 
Addison's liymn, "The Lord my pasture shall prepare." 

2. The Abbey. Westminster Abbey, supi^osed to have been built 
by Edward the Confessor, 105.5-1005. Henry VII.'s chapel occupies 
the site of a chapel to the Virgin, erected by Henry III. The Jerusalem 
Chamber adjoins the southwest tower, built 1376-1380. See Hare's 
" Walks in London," Vol. II. It has been considered one of the 
greatest honors that can be bestowed to be buried in the Abbey. Re- 
call Admiral Nelson's words at the battle of Cape Vincent, " West- 
minster Abbey or Victory." 

Page 106. 1. The concluding paragraph of Macaulay's "Essay 
on Addison " is in the essayist's best style. Compare his elegant 
diction with Dr. Samuel Johnson's strong, but often rough, manner. 
" Lives of the Poets," Vol. II. , Addison. Dr. Johnson writes, in his 
life of Addison: "Addison did not conclude his life in peaceful 
studies, but relapsed, when he was near his end, to a political dispute." 
"Of his habits, or external manners, nothing is so often mentioned 



112 NOTES. 

as tliat tiuKH'uus or sullen taciturnity, wliicli his frionds called modesty, 
by too mild a name." 

Other terse sentences of praise and blame might be quoted from 
Dr. Johnson. The rugged Doctor may, however, in some measure be 
considered as condoning his harshness towards the gentle and gifted 
Spectator, by his quotation from Tickell's "excellent elegy on his 
friend," 

" He taught us how to live ; and oh ! too high 
The price of knowledge, taught us how to die." 



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